Chapter 26

Earth time: 12:27 PM Saturday, May 16, 2015 (EST)

Aina time: 7:44 PM day 254 of 1413 (6 minutes until sunset)

Tom and Ellen were having a quiet dinner on a patio outside the transfer station. In the last of the evening sun, they could see the crowds of people working to port the gear from the top of the mountain.

"Think they'll get it done on time?" asked Ellen, as she munched on some goat's cheese and local vegetables.

"I talked to one of the porters," said Tom. "He says it's going to be close. They still have four hours left on the window. I gather the last seven or eight openings have all lasted exactly 23 hours and 38 minutes. I'm sure they don't want anybody in the spiral tunnel when it closes..."

"Yeah... What would happen? Would you wink out of existence?"

"We might find out, the next time the tunnel opens. Did Kalea tell you about the clock experiment?" asked Tom.

A deep voice spoke behind Ellen's back. "She didn't tell me, that's for sure." Ellen felt large hands descend and hold her shoulders. She blinked and looked around, and then her face broke into a beaming smile. "Leon!"

"Hi mom! I was working with my guild about thirty kilometers north of here. Mark called me this morning to tell me the good news. So, you're staying for good! Great!" Leon walked around and sat down in front of his parents.

Tom nodded. "Living on Earth was just getting to be just a little too crazy. Kalea and Hiapo kept nudging us to come here."

"Yeah, I heard from Mark about the nukes. Kalea and Hiapo are going back?"

"Oh yeah. Lois and Tal too of course. They have years of work planned with the Blue Ring. Kiana and Kahoku are going back too, to finish their educations... I take it you heard about Kiana?"

Leon nodded. "That she's back in the tribe? Yeah. It's good..."

Ellen sighed. "Yes. She's really a very sweet girl. It's still hard to believe what she did to Mayoni."

Leon smiled. "Yeah... I guess love is... well... It can make us to do strange things... So, what's this clock experiment?"

"Do you remember what the spiral part of the tunnel looks like son?" asked Tom.

"Just a bit. I've only gone through it once, many years ago."

"It's shaped like a helix. It's about six feet from the inside wall of the tunnel to the axial core of the helix. You rise seven to eight vertical feet with every revolution."

"Yeah, right. Okay..."

"It's about a 300-foot crawl, eight revolutions. The last seven revolutions wink out of existence when the tunnel closes. From the Earth side, the spiral dead-ends into a granite wall after one revolution from the vertical well."

"Okay..."

"Kalea is going to place three watches in the spiral, near the beginning, middle, and end of the part that closes. Their batteries will last ten years... She used to be very adverse about making such active experiments, but times have changed. The Hopewell really don't need the tunnel for goods anymore. I guess we'll see what happens, in four or five years maybe."

"Who will manage the family finances?"

"It's in a trust. On Earth, Lois is legally married to Hiapo, with Mayoni, Kiana, and Kahoku their adopted children. They all have full rights to administer and disburse the trust funds."

Leon nodded. "Excellent... It's still hard to think of all the currencies of the world going to zero, in another hundred years..."

Ellen shuddered. "Oh yes, we know. A ghost planet... It's in the back of everyone's mind..."

None of the three talked after that. They sat back and just watched the portage teams busily working on the side of Blue Spirit. In a short while evening began to fall, and they all got up to help with the lights on the mountain.

Earth time: 8:40 PM Thursday, May 21, 2015 (EST)

Aina time: 7:09 AM day 260 of 1413 (sunrise was at 3:51 AM)

"Good morning Mayoni! Mind if we join you?"

"Keona! Orna! My! How you've both grown! Sure, pull up some chairs. I see you have the omelets too. Aren't they great?"

Mayoni spent the rest of her breakfast time chatting with her old friends. As they were finishing their meal, Orna broached a new topic. "Mayoni, have you checked in with our marriage class yet?"

"Not yet. The next organizational meeting is in ten days, the first day of Makule, right?"

"Right. Actually, Keona and I have something to ask you. Did you know that our marriage class has decided to break up for smaller projects?"

"Yeah. I've talked with several of my friends in the 1414 class about what they'll be doing."

Orna nodded. "Keona and I had a proposal for a project. We presented it to the council about a month ago. We offered to try to find... a white antelope..."

Mayoni gulped. "Yikes! Those critters are dangerous! Are there any still alive? What were you thinking of?"

Keona piped up. "We know how you suspect the creature might be a modified life-form, like the super-food or X-tree species. We thought we could hunt down a white antelope for you, freeze it for you to study. We were expecting you be here in a year, not now..."

Mayoni nodded thoughtfully. "It'd be an extremely interesting specimen to study. Who knows what clues it would reveal? You were willing to do this for me? I'm very honored. What did the council say?"

"Well," said Orna, "they weren't too impressed. We were the only two to volunteer for the mission. It would involve an expedition to the far north, probably taking half a year. Kikapua said the custom is to have married couples chaperone class trips, and he wouldn't use two people just to chaperone two students. But it was impossible to attract more of the class. To be isolated for so long, our other classmates complained there wouldn't be enough dating opportunities..."

"Well," said Mayoni, "They have a point. I take it that's not an issue for you and Keona?"

"No!" Keona laughed. "Orna and I committed to each other the day after the last Red Bird festival. I know it breaks with custom for me to commit so soon, but Orna and I have discussed marrying for years. We know each other's hearts very well."

"Wow," said Mayoni, "a northern expedition. What do you estimate, three thousand kilometers?"

"Round trip?" asked Orna. "Closer to four thousand. I have the route all mapped out."

"Route?"

"My mother was the chief tracker of the white antelope. She taught me how to track them, where all their favorite hiding places were. The warriors killed my mother, about a year after she failed to find any... Nearly all of the maps of the great northern plateau in the science lab were drawn by me..."

"I know... They're magnificent... But if Kikapua said no, what else can you do?"

"Yes... Well..." said Keona. "He didn't exactly say no. Orna and I were talking last night. We suddenly realized we could satisfy his objections if we find a married couple to chaperone us, but still only take one adult..."

Mayoni stared in puzzlement for a second, and then her eyes widened.

Earth time: 11:10 PM Tuesday June 2, 2015 (EST)

Aina time: 2:02 PM day 272 of 1413

The trio stopped before the cairn of stones. All three were riding mountain bikes and carrying very large backpacks. It was a fine warm day in late spring, and the temperature was pushing 80F in the mid-afternoon sun. Mayoni also had an AK-47 slung across her shoulders, and Orna had a Glock pistol by her side. Mayoni and Keona stared at the stones while Orna took a long drink of water from her canteen. "These stones obviously mean something to you," said Orna. "What is it?"

"Can you read the numbers?" Mayoni asked, talking to Keona.

""436?" said Keona. "I'm not sure."

"Yep. 436. Orna, this is the old-style way of writing Hopewell numbers. This goes right back into a thousand years of our history. We have records of an expedition in 436 making the farthest northern penetration ever attempted by the tribe. And we three did it in one week!"

"Well," smiled Keona. "We have mountain bikes. What do you think Orna, are we making forty kilometers a day?"

"Oh, probably closer to fifty."

Mayoni finished working with her sextant and then looked at her compass and watch for a moment. "Fifty is a really good guess. We've been traveling for six and a half days now. It's amazing what you can measure with a few simple instruments. I mark our position as 335 km north of * Crater * Lake *, and 15 km west. This is consistent with the sun rising at 2:58 this morning, and not 3:20"

Keona smiled. "Ha! Wonderful. At this rate, we'll be back home before the end of summer."

Orna laughed. "Ah, my dear husband to be, don't count on it. See those mountains on the horizon? We're about to climb to the Awah, what the Paleo call the roof of the world. The great northern plateau will not be as easy as these gentle hills."

Mayoni smiled at her friend, and then glanced down at the pistol strapped to Orna's thigh. "You look very comfortable, packing the pistol. I was impressed how quickly you became such a good shot."

"Oh, I owe it all to the kindness of your father. Once he heard we were going, he spent hours with me each day, teaching me to shoot. I must have shot over five hundred rounds... He was very happy you were taking the carbine Mayoni, but he said we should also have something for what he called close-in work..." Orna sealed her canteen and with a smile retook the lead, biking towards the great mountains before them.

And so the journey went. It was twenty days later, in the early morning of day zero of 1414, when they scouted out the location of the white antelopes' first resting spot. The three quietly climbed up a ridge on a small hill, and then looked out on the lake below. The scene was devoid of large wildlife.

"Real peaceful..." Keona whispered quietly.

"Yeah," whispered Mayoni. "Reminds me a lot of pictures I've seen of Alaska. I got to go to Norway once too. Tom thought I should see reindeer in the wild. Such beautiful country, Norway... A lot like this... Orna, see anything with the binoculars?"

"No... Not a thing..."

"Could they be hiding?"

Orna laughed. "Certainly not! The white antelope is too stupid to hide. The only reason they survive is that no predator likes to eat them... Well, except the Paleo..."

"This land is so amazing!" said Keona. "Yesterday, the sun did not set. Seeing the sun at midnight... I can't get over it..."

Mayoni smiled. "This spot here is right at the edge of the midnight sun. I read it as latitude 55.5 degrees. We're 970 km north of the village, and 320 km west. The sun will set here, briefly, in two days. But we're heading north! We might not see darkness in quite a while..."

And the journey continued. As they followed the arc of their path up the great northern plateau, Mayoni found herself utterly at peace for the first time in many years. She fell in love with the beauty and majesty of the land, cool prairies with cold lakes and streams, lush wildflower meadows bursting with life and filled with the sounds of songbirds and small mammals. The super-food plants were abundant and made meal preparations short and simple chores. Keona and Orna talked with her with as much trust and intimacy as they did with each other. As the days of summer past, Mayoni began to feel less like a chaperone and more like a member of a new family. She would sometimes reflect that this might wind up being the most peaceful part of her life. Thoughts of analyses and plagues were put aside, not forever, but for a time...

It was more than two weeks past midsummer before they reached the northernmost tip of their great arc. Tracks and other signs of the white antelope were completely vacant from the landscape, and Orna had a growing suspicion that the animal might truly be extinct. But there was still one prime location left to check...

"It really will be the best spot to find them," Orna commented to the group, "and less than an hour away now. I think it's their ancestral home. Whenever the Paleo couldn't find any on the plains south of here, they would always come up here to hunt them..."

"And what if this next place is empty too?" asked Keona.

"Then I would think they truly are extinct. It's been a long time coming, hundreds of years... The women trackers used to talk about it. It was common knowledge that the antelope numbers were decreasing with each generation."