“He was in Centralia for a while. You know about the Prairie House, Alex?”
“That’s a storage facility. The place where the Huntsville artifacts were supposed to have been taken.”
“Correct. It was in Grand Forks. Grand Forks isn’t there anymore. But the town still is. They call it Union City now. He was there for a while. I’d guess he was trying to decide whether there was anything to the claim.”
“And—?”
“I don’t know how it turned out. I never got to talk to him about it. I assumed if he’d found anything, he’d have told me.”
“One final question, Luciana: Can you think of anyone else who might be able to shed some light on this?”
“No. I’d say if anybody would know anything, it would be Lawrence. But you’ve already talked with him. And I assume he wasn’t able to help?”
“No.”
“Then I can’t imagine who can. Lawrence and Garnett were very close.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“There might be one other possibility, Alex.” She checked her notebook. “There’s a charter boat outfit in Cumberland. Eisa Friendly Charters. Garnett used to go there a lot. Liked to dive down to the Space Museum. You know the one I mean?”
“Sure. The Florida museum.”
“Right. Anyhow, Eisa’s run by a brother and sister. He got pretty close to them. It’s possible they’d know something. I wouldn’t bet on it, but it’s all I can suggest.”
Eighteen
A treasure has value far beyond what can be taken to the bank. But it cannot be divided without losing its essence. Cut it into fragments, and there remains only money.
In the morning, we caught a maglev to Fargo, in Centralia. We arrived in the early evening, rented a car, and rode north through a flat landscape that consisted mostly of cottages and town houses and rosebushes and parks. The lawns weren’t as lush as we’d seen elsewhere, but Centralia had a reputation for being cold. I’d seen pictures of the area in an earlier age, and it wasn’t hard to believe it had once been home to vast, windswept prairies.
We’d been under way about half an hour when we received a message from Rimway.
Interstellar communications are, of course, not cheap. Consequently, if someone wants to send a transmission across the stars, he will frequently look for others who might also wish to make contact with the party at the other end, thereby dividing the cost by bundling the messages. There’d been no bundling with this one, no apparent concern about cost.
It was from Leonard Culbertson, the lawyer for the Capella Families. Alex looked at it and passed it to me. “Alex,” it said, “I hope you’ve seen the wisdom of stopping the people who want to play lethal games with the drive unit on the Capella. We are still gathering support for our initiative. We have tried to go through the courts, but no action will be forthcoming in time to prevent a disaster. In any case, the scientists are being very reassuring. In fact, they’re making a strong case. They are going to bring in young teens and argue that they have been deprived of a parent for most of their lives, and that, unless the court allows the procedure to take place, some of them won’t see their parents until they’re in their thirties or forties.
“Your voice means a lot in this struggle. A statement from you will not necessarily carry the day, but it would have considerable weight. If you can help, the sooner you are heard, the better.
“However you decide, I appreciate that you’ve at least listened. A reply to this message has already been paid for. Again, thank you for your time.”
We were seated in back while the car navigated through heavy traffic. Alex was staring straight ahead. The roadway was sealed off from pedestrians or animals, raised three or four meters off ground level.
I’d never have described Alex as being indecisive. But at that moment, he looked like a man in pain.
“Maybe we could try contacting John,” I said. “It’s possible they’ve had a breakthrough, and they could guarantee everybody’s safety.”
“No.” He was scowling, as if some dark creature fluttered outside the windshield. “If they’d managed something like that, he’d have let us know.”
The car got us to Union City shortly after sunset. The visitors’ center was closed, but we’d done the research. The Prairie House had been located on what was now the northeastern edge of town, a few blocks from the Red River.
We checked in at a hotel and drove to the site, which was occupied by an abandoned church. It was away from streetlights and flanked by a vacant lot on one side and a grocery store on the other. The front doors were at the top of a half dozen steps. A sign off to one side identified the grounds as the Good Shepherd Baptist Church. Another sign stated that it was closed. A stone angel, with folded wings, waited on one side of a walkway, and a large cross rose from the steeple. The grounds were freshly cut, and there were a few headstones in back. Lights were just coming on in the houses, and people were sitting out on porches while kids chased one another along otherwise-quiet streets.
We got out of the car. The church had been there a long time, almost a century. The data for the site went back almost a thousand years. The location had usually been occupied by a church. But there had been private homes, a couple of retail shops, and even, at one point, a hardware store.
Prior to that, the record was unclear. It wasn’t even certain this had been the location of the storied Prairie House, which, in its time, had served as a community center, a warehouse, and a militia outpost. It had been burned down once, or maybe twice, during the Dark Age. No picture of it existed.
The Baptist church had closed down twenty years earlier, when the city took over the property and tried, with no success, to cash in on the Apollo artifacts legend by establishing an Apollo gift shop. The former gift shop still stood, pale and desolate, beside the church, where it now functioned as a grocery store.
The rock walls of the church were dark and gray. “I don’t think we’re going to learn much here,” I said.
“You never know, Chase.” He took a deep breath. I could see frustration in his eyes.
“What?” I said.
“The scanner would have come in handy. I’d like to see what the lower levels look like.”
“You don’t think there could still be something here, do you?”
“Anything’s possible. But no, it’s not very likely. Still, I’d like to take a look. Maybe we could at least find some evidence that the artifacts had actually been brought here.”
Some of the kids who’d been playing stopped to watch us. As did a few of the adults on their porches. One man stood up, came down the steps onto a sidewalk, and started across the street in our direction. He was small, with a ridge of gray hair around his skull. His ears stuck out, and he probably needed a better diet. He took a long look at our car as he passed it. “Hello,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“We’re tourists,” said Alex. “I see we’re too late to get a look at the church. Do you know if there’s any way we can get inside?”
“Well, you’re right. It is a little bit late. Why would you want to go in there?”
“We’re interested in the Prairie House.”