The Anomaly(44)

I’d worked with Ken long enough to understand the distinction. And I agreed with his take. “So what?”

“Fuck knows. The river’s pretty bumpy down there. And probably a lot worse now if there’s a storm. So maybe it’s beached somewhere downriver. We’re just going to have to hope he comes back tomorrow morning and waits.”

I felt something turn over in my stomach. A liquid sensation. Not a repercussion of drinking water from the pool, but a beat of low, intense uncertainty. A recognition that it wouldn’t take much for our situation to morph from not great to really very bad indeed.

I stomped down on the thought. “What’s plan B?”

“The only one I’ve got is…”

“Asking her to swim it?”

“Yeah. Which is a big ask. But she could get down to that beach we camped on, and wait. Scream her head off at the next boat to come down the river. And yes, we have no way of telling how long that could take. But unless you’ve got something smarter up your billowy sleeve…”

“Yeah, right. You’re the brains of this operation.”

“That’s what worries me. Because I have my limitations, and there’s a danger this situation is about to get shitty, Nolan.”

He looked at me. “As in, not very good at all.”





Chapter

26



I don’t know what time it was when I woke. I’d finally remembered to power down my phone and didn’t want to turn it back on for fear of waking someone. I lay on my back for a while in the darkness, remembering a story I’d heard once about a guy who’d been on one of the moon missions and had a dream while he was there. In it he was driving the moon buggy and started to realize he could see something coming toward him. Gradually he understood that it was another buggy. He kept watching, warily, and eventually he realized that the guy driving it…was him.

I remembered hearing this story and thinking how mind-melting it must have been to undergo that dream, and wake up and think…Ah, okay, it was just a dream. But then to remember moments later: Wait, Christ—I’m on the moon.

Waking to find myself trapped inside a prehistoric artifact created by a culture (or cultures) unknown—our only hope of escape being a South African raft captain, whereabouts also currently uncertain…it felt kind of the same.

We’d stayed up a couple more hours after Feather’s return. Talking about this and that, speculating about the purpose of what we’d found, remembering previous expeditions. Ken spent a while reminiscing in lavish detail about some of his most memorable cheeseburgers, until everyone turned and looked at him. We each took half an hour sitting down by the stone ball, talking with Feather on the other side.

It was during my stint that she fell asleep, or at least stopped responding. I’d like to think it’s because I have a nice voice and a soothing, reassuring manner. It could be that I’m unbelievably dull.

By then everyone else was beat. And hungry and thirsty. It was agreed that sleeping was the obvious way of trying to ignore those facts, and of bringing on tomorrow more quickly.

We each took our own backpack for a pillow and stretched out in a patch of space in the main room. You might think it’d take a while to get to sleep in such circumstances. Not for me. It was dark, and very quiet. I was exhausted. And there wasn’t anything else that could be done. I am a shambles of a human being in many ways, shackled with a personality that’s at best a rough first draft, but I’ve always been able to ignore problems over which I presently have no control. Which admittedly often includes “life in general.”

After subsequently waking and lying there for twenty minutes, I became aware of a quiet sound off to my right. I’d made a guess at who it might be before I heard the steady cadence of her breathing—a rhythm interrupted every now and then by a quiet hitching sound as she started to hyperventilate and had to bring it under control again.

I sat up. Patted my hand around until I found the small lanyard light I’d placed nearby. Crawled over, taking my time and not trying to be super quiet, to give Molly a chance to realize I was coming her way. When I was up close I reached out in the darkness and by chance found her hand.

“Come with me,” I whispered.



I guided her by the shoulder toward where I thought the doorway would be, and missed by only a few yards. When we were in the passage I walked for thirty feet or so before turning on the light, keeping it low and in front.

Molly blinked and squinted against the glow. “What are you doing? Why are we here?”

She’d kept her voice low, and I did, too. “Want to show you something.”

“I don’t want to go up there.”

“You should at least see,” I said.

“Really, Nolan. I don’t want to.”

“Well, I’m going. If you want to go back and sit there fretting in the dark, be my guest.”

I started walking again. After a few seconds, she followed.

I led her along to the last doorway on the left, and then into the narrower passage beyond. “Careful,” I said, when I knew we must be getting close.

I turned the light to the floor and stopped walking when I saw it abruptly disappear. Then raised the light so it shone across the pool.

She looked out over the water. With only this single, weaker light, it looked less clear than earlier. And without being able to see the sides, like nothing more than a pool of standing water in a cave, of a type she’d doubtless encountered any number of times as a kid on road trips with Californian parents. She gazed out at it nonetheless.