Trailing Tara

Map of the World

PART ONE

Flow

The hardest part of the search was that Adrian Weber had no idea what he was looking for. He had spent an hour battling through tangled underbrush, pacing across alluvial swamps and brushing aside branches of low balsam trees. His boots were caked in muck. His work shirt was ripped by thorns.

Just follow the map, he told himself. Yet he also fought a rising uncertainty that this journey was not worth his time.

Two hours earlier, Adrian had passed a wad of cash to the grizzled owner of a marina store, paying to rent a small outboard motor boat. He then tossed his daypack behind the seat and throttled up Kingcome Inlet. Chilled air slapped his face as he navigated through a morass of shifting sandbars and floating stumps. He eyed breathtaking vistas of sinewy peaks and glistening trees along this isolated fjord beneath British Columbia’s Coastal Range Mountains. Adrian steered aggressively through the maze of isles, channels, inlets and sounds. His limber body was slapped by flying spray. He passed two remote villages of Kwakiutl Indians, their white bungalows surrounded by thick green foliage. Three black-tailed deer loped along the nearby land and a great blue heron skimmed low before him.

Within an hour Adrian had pulled alongside the shore. He stepped onto rocky soil and fastened the boat with a bowline knot to the trunk of a western red cedar. The coastal humidity felt heavy.

Now, as Adrian pushed brush aside, the light ahead changed. The mottled darkness transformed to uniform brightness. He peered toward the clearing ahead and pushed on.

Adrian’s thirty four year old face blended soft innocence with craggy determination. He appeared to be a cross between an aspiring actor and a combat hardened officer. Adrian was in difficult terrain – physically and psychologically. He both relished and feared the unknown world he had chosen to enter: a cryptic message, unknown geography, and an uncertain purpose.

The clearing was only one minute ahead. As he pushed aside branches, he recalled the message that prompted this trip. While sitting at his porch table overlooking a sprawling vista of Seattle, he had read the hand scrawled letter he received three days earlier.

‘Go to this place,’ it read. ‘Seeing is believing.’

Adrian had not regarded this as crank mail, because the envelope contained fifty crisp one hundred dollars bills. A paperclip attached this brief note to a Canadian Federal Topographic map, where a circled red X indicated the destination. The note included no signature or return address.

He hacked his muscled forearms to clear the growth, then stepped into the clearing. The space before him formed a square, an opening in the brush that measured one hundred yards on each side. Bare soil coated the earth. Sunlight flooded the space ahead.

Adrian wiped sweat from his forehead. He looked at the far corner of the square where a path to his left entered from the surrounding forest. Whoever cleared the space had used that entrance. But what drew Adrian’s attention lay in the middle of the square. An earthen ramp fifty feet long ran upward from his right to the left at a uniform angle, forming a shape like a tilted Toblerone bar. Starting at ground level, this slope raised to a height of seven feet before it descended steeply to the earth again. A foot wide plastic canal ran along the ridge of this inclined mound – along the top of the Toblerone box – ascending from earth level on the right to the top of the incline at the left, then plummeting to ground level again. In front of this entire geometrical pile of soil a trench dug in the earth was lined with plastic. This formed a semi-circle on the ground that connected both ends of the inclined canal, creating a complete loop. Adrian heard gurgling water running through this canal.

He walked to the right, to the lower end of the ramp. From there he looked at the canal running upward and inspected the burbling water. He stared at the flow, then recoiled.

The water was flowing uphill.

Zuma

Tara Leonard closed the cloth bound cover of Longman’s Historical Atlas of Africa. She arched her shoulders backward, rolling them to relax, then inspected the sepia brown photographs on the wall of Payson Library that showed alumni – including a chemistry student wearing a tie hold a beaker in a lab, and a cheerleader beating a drum emblazoned with Pepperdine College Band. She quickly glanced at the glass wall and watched students in short sleeves walk past palm trees outside.

Goodbye, she thought.

She sighed.

Tara stood and walked past a huge wooden eagle perched beside the doorway, then stepped into the warm spring day. She trotted up the twenty six concrete steps she had counted so often before, then inhaled the sweet scent of eucalyptus leaves towering over her vehicle parked on Seaver Drive.

She wanted one final look at the campus before departing, one final view of what had encompassed her life during the past three years. She got in her car and aimed toward the steep Santa Ana Mountains along Huntsinger Circle Loop, then drove past manicured campus lawns facing Malibu’s oceanfront. Uniformed gardeners wearing green visors tended lilies along the road median.

Time to move on, she whispered to herself after leaving campus and turning left on Pacific Coast Highway. Downhill, at Cross Creek intersection, she turned left again and within a hundred yards maneuvered into a tight parking space.

After stepping out of her car, Tara noticed a construction worker and a well dressed vendor eyeing her petite figure and well toned calf muscles. She flicked her long brunette hair over one shoulder, then paused for a moment to pull up her snug shorts another inch. She knew they were tight on her rear, which meant more looks. Although she never considered herself vain, Tara appreciated the added attention she received at this time of uncertainty in her life.

She sauntered into the Coffee Bean and inhaled the aroma inside the crowded, darkened room. She bought a chai tea and sat alone at a corner table beside a window. After taking one sip, Tara pushed the drink away. She unwrapped an elastic cord holding a manila folder closed. She pulled out a two inch thick bound manuscript and ran a finger along one edge.

Three years.

She sighed.

Three years of globetrotting research to produce her doctoral dissertation.

And still no respect.

Tara pulled the cup back and took another sip. She recalled some of her travels to gather data about water supply systems of ancient civilizations. She had ridden in the dusty back bed of a pickup truck barreling across rural roads of Southern China, and had spent two weeks combing through musty missionary libraries in Guatemala. She had paced across scorching Peruvian shorelines to inspect archaeological digs and had bickered with corrupt Zimbabwean officials. She had learned a smattering of Hindi in India and was incapacitated for a week by dysentery in a Venezuelan jungle village. During these forays across the globe Tara had interviewed historians and villagers and sorted through dozens of forgotten reports to gather data needed to establish her unexpected conclusion. She knew that her methodology – that of literature review enhanced by credible first hand data – was sound. And what did the doctoral candidate review board do with her thesis? They granted Tara a PhD, but only after brandishing the caveat that her work, though meticulously researched, was overly speculative for such an unusual conclusion.

Overly speculative. Screw that, thought Tara. She recalled how the committee chairman actually used those words while he stroked his ridiculous handlebar mustache beneath a condescending gaze.

Horseshit, she thought.

The roomful of seven academics who gathered to pass judgment on her thesis were idiots, thought Tara. She knew the ramifications of her work were immense – or else they soon would be.

She ran one hand through her glossy hair. A younger undergraduate, tanned and flexing a gym-hardened bicep, smiled at her. She smiled back. Tempting, she thought. But, no. Too young. She finished her drink, replaced the thesis in its folder, and walked outside.

She drove back past Pepperdine campus and continued north past the Kanan Dume intersection, then coasted downhill before parking at Zuma Beach. The light was soft, the wind warm. The summer weekend crowds had departed for another nine months. Once again Malibu’s two dozen miles of clean beaches backed by green brown rolling mountains turned sleepy. Tara paced along the beach, rummaging her bare toes in sand.

Why was the committee so critical of her work? She thought her premise was simple: that ancient civilizations – including the Mayans, Sumerians, the Moche of Peru and even proto North American civilizations of the Anasazi and Hohokam – had all perished from the same cause. Was the obvious so difficult to accept? Why did others find it painful to learn that the past might help guide everyone toward a better future?

Three dolphins surfed inside a curling wave. A string of pelicans glided inches above the water’s surface, dancing on wind as they played – thought Tara – with life. The sight inspired her. She wanted to leave Malibu with a fresh beginning, not weary from the frustrating end to her efforts. She was tired of research. Tired of academia. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the folded email she had printed that morning. She read the words again. The job offer sounded enticing. It was in the desert. Remote. ‘Work to supply water to rural regions…’

Tara stared at the dolphins again.

Why not, she thought. It would be one hell of a complete change.

Displacement

"Ah, too messy!" Jacob Entner growled. He brushed his wrinkled right hand against the few hairs clinging to his head and reached the other hand down to scratch his blue cotton shirt.

Jacob picked up a pair of needle nose pliers from a laboratory bench. He used these to grip the coin half embedded in a chromium ball bearing wedged in the vice before him. He first pulled lightly at the quarter, then more forcefully.

The coin did not budge.

He placed the pliers on the table. The coin and bearing were fused. The combination looked odd – like a silver wafer protruding from a scoop of metallic colored ice cream. Jacob loosened the vice. He removed the bizarre looking chunk of metal and placed it on the Ohaus precision scale before him. He then touched the electronic activation switch on the right side of the console. A set of red numbers lit up, flickering with precision.

Jacob looked at the piece of paper on the table before him.

He inspected the final row, then removed his glasses. He squinted before he whispered to himself.

Once again. Breaking the laws of physics.

Jacob had considered this problem before. Alone, the ball bearing weighed 31.937 grams. The quarter weighed 5.67 grams. When the two fused together, the aggregate weight should have read 37.607 grams – the sum of both numbers. Instead the scale readout showed a lesser figure of 34.747 grams. This number reflected approximately half the weight of the quarter – the portion that poked out of the ball bearing.

He frowned. What had happened to the rest of the coin? Even if the quarter had molecularly fused into the ball bearing, it still had to have weight. Somehow, that weight had vanished.

Which was impossible.

And this was not the first time.

Always the same, he muttered.

The phone rang. He let it ring four times, then picked up the receiver. His delay was intended to show the caller that he did not appreciate being disturbed while he worked.

Yes? Entner speaking.

He paused and listened, then spoke again.

Progress is on schedule.

He paused, sighed and spoke again. It’s bizarre, I tell you. I can work with this process, I just don’t understand it. I told you about the side effects. Remember what I said about the metals? They fuse spontaneously, without a heat source and with no chemical catalyst. Then after they merge, no metal is displaced.

He paused to listen, then continued.

Yes, it upsets me. Fusing without heat is inexplicable. But fusing without displacing mass is impossible. Imagine lowering yourself into a bathtub and the water does not rise. The weight of your body under the water vanishes. Vanishes! As if you and the bathwater had merged into one.

Jacob stared at the odd looking chunk of two dissimilar metals merged together.

It’s happened seven times in the past two weeks.

He grimaced.

It won’t impact our goal. I just want to understand what’s happening. I’m a scientist. Los Alamos was my home, and I thought your talk about breaking the laws of physics sounded crazy. But I came, didn’t I? You charmed me. Appealed to my sense of curiosity. But I never believed it was going to get this crazy.

Pause.

Yes! On schedule. But I also want to understand this phenomenon. I’ve worked here six months and am almost finished. I’m curious. It’s my nature.

A minute later Jacob hung up.

He shook his head again. The work got weirder every day.

Well

Ten year old Grace Njovu bent forward. In a well practiced maneuver she lifted up her one-year old sister, placed her across her own arched back, and then wrapped a cotton chitenje cloth around the baby. She pulled one end under her right arm and another over her left shoulder, then tied both ends in a knot.

Grace clasped her ebony dark fingers around a two gallon tin pail perched on her mud hut porch and lifted. She placed this on her head.

The East African sunrise in this country of Malawi was still an hour away. Grace’s mother had left the hut minutes earlier, venturing out to gather firewood with her other baby girl, only two months old, strapped to her back. She had set off east toward the mountains of Zambia, on a round trip journey of ten miles.

By comparison, Grace’s task would take less