Thunderbird, p.1
Thunderbird, page 1
Novels by Jack McDevitt
Ancient Shores
Thunderbird
The Hercules Text
Eternity Road
Moonfall
Infinity Beach
Time Travelers Never Die
WITH MIKE RESNICK
The Cassandra Project
The Priscilla Hutchins Novels
The Engines of God
Deepsix
Chindi
Omega
Odyssey
Cauldron
Starhawk
The Alex Benedict Novels
A Talent for War
Polaris
Seeker
The Devil’s Eye
Echo
Firebird
Coming Home
Collections
Standard Candles
Ships in the Night
Outbound
Cryptic: The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.
Copyright © 2015 by Cryptic, Inc.
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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-18534-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McDevitt, Jack.
Thunderbird / by Jack McDevitt.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-0-425-27919-9 (hardcover)
I. Title.
PS3563.C3556T48 2015
813'.54—dc23
2015023789
FIRST EDITION: December 2015
Cover illustration by Tony Mauro.
Cover design by Rita Frangie.
Title page art: Circuit Board © Askold Romanov/iStock.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Merry McDevitt, beloved daughter
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Walt Cuirle, Michael Fossel, Scott Ryfun, Frank Manning, and Les Johnson for advice and technical assistance. To Ginjer Buchanan and Diana Gill, editors past and present. To my agent, Chris Lotts, who asked the right questions. To copy editor Sara Schwager. To my wife, Maureen, and my son Chris, who made major contributions. And to the Spirit Lake Sioux, who, years ago, welcomed me onto the reservation and made it, for a brief period, my home.
CONTENTS
ALSO BY JACK MCDEVITT
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EPIGRAPHS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start
When memory plays an old tune on the heart.
—Eliza Cook, Lays of a Wild Harp, 1835
Great Spirit, fill us with the light.
Give us the strength to understand
And eyes to see.
—Mni Wakan Oyate prayer
PROLOGUE
JERI TULLY WAS eight years old. Mentally, she was about three, and the experts cautioned her parents against hoping for any serious improvement. No one knew what had gone wrong with Jeri. There was no history of mental defects on either side of her family and no apparent cause. She had two younger brothers, both of whom were quite normal.
Her father was a border patrolman, her mother a former legal secretary who had given up all hope of a career when she followed her husband to Fort Moxie.
Jeri went to school in Walhalla, which conducted the only local special-education class. She enjoyed the school, where she made numerous friends and where everyone seemed to make a fuss over her. Mornings in the Tully household were underscored by Jeri’s enthusiasm to get moving.
Walhalla was thirty-five miles away. The family had an arrangement with the school district, which was spread out over too vast an area to operate buses for the special-education kids: The Tullys provided their own transportation, and the district absorbed the expenses.
Jeri’s mother had actually grown to enjoy the daily round-trip. The child loved to ride, and she was never happier than when in the car. The other half of the drive, when Mom was alone, served as a quiet time, when she could just watch the long fields roll by, or plug an audio book into the system.
Jeri’s father worked the midnight shift that night, and his wife was waiting for him when he got home in the morning with French toast, bacon, and coffee. While they were at breakfast, an odd thing happened. For the only time in her life, Jeri wandered away from home. It seemed, later, that she had decided to go to school and, having no concept of distance, had begun walking.
Unseen by anyone except a two-year-old brother, she put on her overshoes and her coat, let herself out through the porch door, walked up to Route 11, and turned right. Her house was on the extreme western edge of town, so she got past the demolished Dairy Queen and across the interstate overpass within minutes. The temperature, which is exceedingly erratic in April, had fallen back into the teens.
Three-quarters of a mile outside Fort Moxie, Route 11 curves sharply south and almost immediately veers west again. Had the road been free of snow, Jeri would probably have stayed with the highway and been picked up within a few minutes. But a light snowfall had dusted the highway. She wasn’t used to paying attention to details and, at the first bend, she walked straight off the road. When, a few minutes later, the snow got deeper, she angled right and got still farther away.
Jeri’s parents had by then discovered she was missing. A frightened search was just getting started, but it was limited to within a block or so of her home.
Jim Stuyvesant, the editor and publisher of the Fort Moxie News, was on his way to the Roundhouse. Rumors that an apparition had come through from the other side were going to be denied that morning in a press conference, and Jim planned to be there. He was just west of town when he saw movement out on Josh McKenzie’s land to his right: A small whirlwind was gliding back and forth in a curiously regular fashion. The wind phenomenon was a perfect whirlpool, narrow at the base, wide at the top. Usually, these things were blurred around the edges, and they floated erratically across the plain. But this one looked almost solid, and it moved methodically back and forth along a narrow track.
Stuyvesant pulled off the road and stopped to watch.
It was almost hypnotic. A stiff blast of air rocked the car, enough to blow the small whirlwind to pieces. But it remained intact.
Stuyvesant never traveled without his video camera, which he had used on several occasions to get material he’d subsequently sold to Ben at Ten or to one of the other local TV news shows. (He had, for example, got superb footage of the Thanksgiving Day pileup on I-29, and the blockade of imported beef at the border port by angry ranchers last summer.) The floater continued to glide back and forth in its slow, unwavering pattern. He turned on the camera, walked a few steps into the field, and started to record.
He used the zoom lens to get close and got a couple of minutes’ worth before the whirlwind seemed to pause.
It started toward him.
He kept filming.
It approached at a constant pace. There was something odd in its manner, something almost deliberate.
A sudden burst of wind out of the north ripped at his jacket but didn’t seem to have any effect on the thing. Stuyvesant’s instincts began to sound warnings, and he took a step back toward the car.
It stopped. Remained still in the middle of the field.
Amazing. As if it had responded to him.
He stood, uncertain how to proceed. It began to move again, laterally. It retreated a short distance, then came forward again to its previous position.
He watched it through the camera lens. The red indicator lamp glowed at the bottom of the picture.
You’re waiting for me.
It approached again, and a sudden burst of wind tugged at his collar and his hair.
He took a step forward. And it retreated.
Like everyone else in the Fort Moxie area, Stuyvesant had been deluged with fantastic tales and theories since the Roundhouse had been uncovered, with its pathways to other worlds. Now, without prompting, he wondered whether a completely unknown type of life-form existed on the prairie and was revealing itself to him. He laughed at the idea. And began to wonder what he really believed.
He started forward.
It withdrew before him, matching his pace.
He kept going. The snow got deeper, filled his shoes, and froze his ankles.
It hovered before him. He hoped he was getting the effect on camera.
It whirled and glittered in the sun, maintaining its distance. He stopped, and it stopped. He started again, and it matched him.
Another car was slowing down, pulling off the highway. He wondered how he would explain this, and immediately visualized next week’s headline in the News: MAD EDITOR PUT UNDER GUARD.
But it was a hunt without a point. The fields went on, all the way to Winnipeg. Far enough, he decided. “Sorry,” he said, aloud. “This is as far as I go.”
And the thing withdrew another sixty or so yards. And collapsed.
When it did, it revealed something dark lying in the snow.
Jeri Tully.
That was the day Stuyvesant got religion.
ONE
O’er the hills and far away.
—Thomas D’Urfey, Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719
EVEN THOUGH HE’D seen the eerie green glow atop the mountain almost every night on TV, Brad Hollister was still surprised that evening as the hills got out of the way, and he saw it for the first time through his windshield. It was easy to understand why people had panicked a few weeks earlier, had thought it was radioactivity and fled the area. They were mostly back now, of course, assured by official sources that the radiation was not hazardous. The world had been shocked when a structure thousands of years old had been excavated on the Sioux reservation near Devils Lake in North Dakota. And shocked again when, a few days later, it began to emit that soft green light. And completely rattled when investigators discovered it was a star gate. That was the capability, of course, that stayed in the headlines. And kept the phones ringing at Grand Forks Live, Brad’s call-in show on KLYM.
Scientific teams had been transported to three locations, a garden world that the media immediately branded “Eden,” a second location that seemed to be nothing more than a series of passageways in a structure that had no windows, and a deserted space station that appeared to be located outside the Milky Way.
Missions were going out regularly, mostly to Eden and the station. A team of eight journalists, accompanied by two Sioux security escorts, were on Eden now, expected to return that evening. And a group of scientists were scheduled to head for the same destination within the hour. Brad’s callers wanted him to make the trip, and he’d been assuring them he would eventually. But before he climbed onto the circular stone, with its gridwork surface, and allowed them to send him off to another world, he wanted to watch the operation. Not that he was scared.
The emerald glow brightened as he drew near on Route 32. Eventually, he turned off onto a side road, cleared a police unit, and began the long climb to the summit. A bright moon hung over the sparse land, and a bitter wind rocked the car. Eventually, as he approached the summit, the Roundhouse became visible. A bubble dome, it stood on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the vast sweep of land that had once contained Lake Agassiz. Thousands of years ago, Agassiz had covered most of North Dakota and a large section of Canada.
The building lay below the level of the surrounding granite. Someone had gouged a space in the rock to make room for the Roundhouse. Brad’s callers were entranced by the theory that the construction had been orchestrated to place the star gate level with the ancient shoreline. Curved struts anchored it in the rock. The surface resembled a beveled emerald plastic.
It was surrounded by several temporary structures, which had been erected to support the science teams and the security effort. The area was sealed off by a wired fence. A gateway provided access to cars and trucks.
The gates were down. Brad lowered his window as he pulled alongside the security booth. A young man in a dark blue Sioux uniform looked out.
“My name’s Hollister,” Brad said, handing over his driver’s license. “They know I’m coming.”
The officer checked the ID, touched a computer screen, nodded, and gave it back. “Okay, Mr. Hollister,” he said. “Park wherever you like.”
• • •
A SECURITY GUARD opened the front door for him. He proceeded down a short passageway, past several doors, and entered the dome. This would have been the place that filled with water at high tide, allowing the occupants to take a boat out onto Lake Agassiz. That, of course, was very likely the boat found recently buried on Tom Lasker’s farm, which had led to the discovery.
There were about twenty people, plus three or four uniformed security guards, standing around talking, a few seated at a table. Most were casually dressed, as if preparing for a camping trip. There was also a TV team. A second entrance opened into the chamber from the far side, where everyone was gathered. During the Agassiz years, it would have provided the access for the incoming tide. It had also been, according to the experts, the preferred entrance for the original occupants, the front door, looking out onto a beach. April Cannon was near the transporter, talking with a reporter. The transporter consisted of a circular grid, large enough to have supported Lasker’s boat, and a control device, mounted several feet away on the wall.
April had been the source of his invitation to come in and watch. Brad had known her a long time. She held a doctorate in biochemistry and was a director for Colson Labs, the last time he’d looked. She’d been conscripted by Sioux Chairman James Walker to coordinate the off-world missions, and, as she put it, that had overwhelmed everything else in her life. April had been a guest on Grand Forks Live a couple of times. When she saw him come in, she excused herself and started in his direction.
April was an attractive young African-American, with her hair draped around her shoulders, animated features, scintillating eyes, and a persuasive manner. Brad had always suspected that, had she gone into sales instead of chemistry, she would have been wealthy by then. “Perfect timing, Brad,” she said. “We’ve got some people coming in any minute now.”
“Hi, April. Where are they now? Eden?”
“Yes. They’re all media types. After they get back, we’ll be sending out a team of scientists. Biologists and astronomers.”
“Have they figured out where the place is yet?”
“No. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll do it tonight.” She shook her head. “We know it’s pretty far.”
“I guess it would have to be.”
She laughed. And turned away. “It’s starting.” The front area, near the transport device, brightened though Brad could see no source for the light. “Anyway, glad to see you, Brad,” she said. “The show’s about to start.” She went back to the transporter and joined one of the Sioux, who seemed to be in charge of overseeing the recovery process. A wave of excitement swept through the crowd. A few people started moving closer to the stone grid. The security guards moved in to keep them at a distance.
