Julian May - Dune Roller.pdf - Julian May - margozap

DUNE ROLLER

by Julian May

Originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction

eBook scanned & proofed by Binwiped 11-28-02 [v1.0]

There were only two who saw the meteor fall into Lake Michigan, long ago. One was a Pottawatomie

brave hunting rabbits among the dunes on the shore; he saw the, fire-streak arc down over the water

and was afraid, because it was an omen of ill favor when the stars left the heaven and drowned

themselves in the Great Water. The other who saw was a sturgeon who snapped greedily at the

meteor as it fell—quite reduced in size by now—to the bottom of the fresh water sea. The big fish

took it into his mouth and then spat it out again in disdain. It was not good to eat. The meteor drifted

down through the cold black water and disappeared. The sturgeon swam away, and presently, he

died. . . .

Dr. Ian Thorne squatted beside a shore pool and netted things. Under the sun of late July, the

lake waves were sparkling deep blue far out, and glass-clear as they broke over the sandbar into Dr.

Thorne's pool. A squadron of whirligig beetles surfaced warily and came toward him leading little

v-shaped shadow wakes along the tan sand bottom. A back-swimmer rowed delicately out of a green

cloud of algae and snooped around a centigrade thermometer which was suspended in the water from

a driftwood twig.

3:00 p.m., wrote Dr. Thorne in a large, stained notebook. Air temp 32, water temp —he leaned

over to get a better look at the thermometer and the back-swimmer fled —28. Wind, light variable;

wave action, diminishing. Absence of drifted specimens. He dated a fresh sheet of paper, headed

it Fourteenth Day, and began the bug count.

He scribbled earnestly in the sun, a pleasant-faced man of thirty or so. He wore a Hawaiian shirt

and shorts of delicious magenta color, decorated with most unbotanical green hibiscus. An old

baseball cap was on his head.

He skirted the four-by-six pool on the bar side and noted that the sand was continuing to pile up.

It would not be long before the pool was stagnant, and each day brought new and fascinating changes

in its population. Gyrinidae, Hydrophilidae, a Corixa hiding in the rubbish on the other end. Some

kind of larvae beside a piece of water-logged board; he'd better take a specimen or two of that. L.

intacta sunning itself smugly on the thermometer.

The back-swimmer, its confidence returned, worked its little oars and zig-zagged in and out of

the trash. N. undulata, wrote Dr. Thorne.

When the count was finished, he took a collecting bottle from the fishing creel hanging over his

shoulder and maneuvered a few of the larvae into it, using the handle of the net to herd them into

position.

And then he noticed that in the clear, algae-free end of the pool, something flashed with a light

more golden than that of mere sun on water. He reached out the net to stir the loose sand away.

It was not a pebble or a piece of chipped glass as he had supposed; instead, he fished out a

small, droplike object shaped like a marble with a tail. It was a beautiful little thing of pellucid amber

color, with tiny gold flecks and streaks running through it. Sunlight glanced off its smooth sides, which

were surprisingly free of the surface scratches that are the inevitable patina of flotsam in the

sand-scoured dunes.

He tapped the bottom of the net until the drop fell into an empty collecting bottle and admired it

for a minute. It would be a pretty addition to his collection of Useless Miscellanea. He might put it in a

little bottle between the tooled brass yak bell and the six-inch copper sulfate crystal.

He was collecting his equipment and getting ready to leave when the boat came. It swept up out

of the north and nosed in among the sand bars offshore, a dignified, forty-foot Matthews cruiser

named Carlin, which belonged to his friend, Kirk MacInnes.

"'Hoy, Mac!" Dr. Thorne yelled cordially. "Look out for the new bar the storm brought in!"

A figure on the flying bridge of the boat waved briefly and howled something unintelligible around

a pipe clamped in its teeth. The cruiser swung about and the mutter of her motors died gently. She lay

rocking in the little waves a few hundred feet offshore. After a short pause a yellow rubber raft

dropped over the stern.

Good old Mac, thought Thorne. The little ex-engineer with that Skye terrier moustache and the

magnificent boat visited him regularly, bringing the mail and his copy of the Biological Review, or

bottled goods of a chemistry designed to prevent isolated scientists from catching cold. He was a

frequent and welcome visitor, but he had always come alone.

Previous to this.

"Well, well," said Dr. Thorne, and then looked again.

The girl was sitting in the stern of the raft while MacInnes paddled deftly, and as they drew closer

Thorne saw that her hair was dark and curly. She wore a spotless white playsuit, and a deep blue

handkerchief was knotted loosely around her throat. She was looking at him, and for the first time he

had qualms about the Hawaiian shorts.

The yellow flank of the raft grated on the stony beach. MacInnes, sixty and grizzled, a venerable

briar between his teeth, climbed out and wrung Thorne's hand.

"Brought you a visitor this time, Ian. Real company. Jeanne, this gentleman in the shorts and

fishing creel is Dr. Ian Thorne, the distinguished writer and lecturer. He writes books about dune

ecology, whatever that is. Ian, my niece, Miss Wright."

Thorne murmured politely. Why, that old scoundrel. That sly old dog. But she was pretty, all

right.

"How engaging," smiled the girl. "An ecologist with a leer."

Dr. Thorne's face abruptly attempted to adopt the protective coloration of his shorts. He said,

"We're really not bad fellows at heart, Miss Wright. It's the fresh air that gives us the pointed ears."

"I see," she said, in a tone that made Thorne wonder just how much she saw. "Were you

collecting specimens here today, Dr. Thorne?"

"Not exactly. You see, I'm preparing a chapter on the ecology of beach pool associations, and

this little pool here is my guinea pig. The sand bar on the lake side will grow until the pool is

completely cut off. As its stagnation increases, progressive forms of plant and animal life will inhabit

it—algae, beetles, larvae, and so forth. If we have calm weather for the next few weeks, I can get an

excellent cross section of the plant-animal societies which develop in this type of an environment. The

chapter on the pool is one in a book I'm doing on ecological studies of the Michigan State dunes."

"All you have to do is charge him up," MacInnes remarked, yawning largely, "and he's on the air

for the rest of the day." He pulled the raft up onto the sand and took out a flat package. "I brought

you a present, if you're interested."

"What is it? The mail?" . '

"Something a heck of a lot more digestible. A brace of sirloins. I persuaded Jeanne to come

along today to do them up for us. I've tasted your cooking."

"I can burn a chop as well as the next man," Thorne protested with dignity. "But I think I'll

concede the point. I was finished here. Shall we go right down to the shack? I live just down the

shore, Miss Wright, in a place perched on top of a sand dune. It's rugged but it's home."

MacInnes chuckled and led the way along the firm damp sand near the water's edge.

In some places the tree-crowned dunes seemed to come down almost to the beach level. Juniper

and pines and heavy undergrowth were the only things holding the vast creeping monster which are

the traveling dunes. Without their green chains, they swept over farms and forests, leaving dead trees

and silver-scoured boards in their wake.

The three of them cut inland and circled a great narrow-necked valley which widened out among

the high sand hills. It was a barren, eery place of sharp, wind-abraded stumps and silent white spaces.

"A sand blow," said Thorne. "The winds do it. Those dunes at the end of the valley in there are

moving. See the dead trees? The hills buried them years ago and then moved on and left these

skeletons. These were probably young oaks."

"Poor things," said the girl, as they moved on.

Then the dismal blow was gone, and green hills with scarcely a show of sand towered over them.

At the top of the largest stood Thorne's lodge, its rustic exterior blending inconspicuously into the

conifers and maples which surrounded it on three sides. The front of the house was .banked with yew

and prostrate juniper for sand control.

A stairway of hewn logs came down the slope of the dune. At its foot stood a wooden bench, a

bright green pump, and an old ship's bell on a pole.

"A dunes doorbell!" Jeanne exclaimed, seizing the rope. "Nobody home yet," Thorne laughed,

"but that's the shack up there."

"Yeah," said MacInnes sourly. "And a hundred and thirty-three steps to the top."

Later, they sat in comfortable rattan chairs on the porch while Thorne manipulated siphon and

glasses.

"You really underestimate yourself, Dr. Thorne," the girl said. "This is no shack, it's a real home.

A lodge in the pines."

"Be it ever so humble," he smiled. "I came up here to buy a two-by-four cabin to park my

typewriter and microscopes in, and a guy wished this young chalet off on me." "The view is

magnificent. You can see for miles." "But when the wind blows a gale off the lake, you think the house

is going to be carried away! It's just the thing for my work, though. No neighbors, not many

picnickers, not even a decent road. I have to drive my jeep down the beach for a couple of miles

before I can hit the cow path leading to the county trunk. No telephones, either. And I have my own

little generating plant out back, or there wouldn't be any electricity."

"No phone?" Jeanne frowned. "But Uncle Kirk says he talks to you every day. I don't

understand."

"Come out here," he invited mysteriously. "I'll show you something."

He led the way to a tiny room with huge windows which lay just off the living room. Radio

equipment stood on a desk and lined the walls. A large plaster model of a grasshopper squatting on

the transmitter rack wore a pair of headphones.

"Ham radio used to be my hobby when I was a kid," he said, "and now it keeps me in touch with

the outside world. I met Mac over the air long before I ever saw him in the flesh. You must have seen

his station at home. And I think he even has a little low power rig in the cruiser."

"I've seen that. Do you mean he can talk to you any time he wants to?"

"Well, it's not like the telephone," Thorne admitted, "the other fellow has to be listening for you on

your frequency. But your uncle and I keep a regular schedule every evening and sometimes in the

morning. And hams in other parts of the country are very obliging in letting me talk to my friends and

colleagues. It works out nicely all the way around."

"Uncle Kirk had represented you as a sort of scientific anchorite," she said, lifting a microphone

and running her fingers over the smooth chrome. "But I'm beginning to think he was wrong."

"Maybe," he said quietly. "Maybe not. I manage to get along. The station is a big help in

overcoming the isolation, but—there are other things. Shall we be getting back to the drinks?"

She put down the microphone and looked at him oddly. "If you like. Thank you for showing me

your station."

"Think nothing of it. If you're ever in a jam, just howl for W8-Dog-Zed-Victor on ten meters."

"All right," she said to him. "If I ever am." She turned and walked out of the door.

The casual remark he had been about to make died on his lips, and suddenly all the loneliness of

his life in the dunes loomed up around him like the barren walls of the sand blow. And he was standing

there with the dead trees all around and the living green forever out of reach. . . .

"This Scotch tastes like iodine," said MacInnes from the porch.

Thorne left the little room and closed the door behind him. "It's the only alcohol in the house,

unless you want to try my specimen pickle," said Thorne, dropping back into his chair. "As for the

flavor—you should know. You brought the bottle over yourself last week."

The girl took Thorne's creel and began to arrange the bottles in a row on the table. Algae,

beetles, and some horrid little things that squirmed when she shook them. Ugh.

"What's this?" she asked curiously, holding up the bottle with the amber drop.

"Something I found in my beach pool this afternoon. I don't know what it is. Rock crystal,

perhaps, or somebody's drowned jewelry."

"I think it's rather pretty," she said admiringly. "It reminds me of something, with that little tail. I

know—Prince Rupert drops. They look just like this, only they're a bit smaller and have an air bubble

in them. When you crack the little tail off them, the whole drop flies to powder." She shrugged

vaguely. "Strain, or something. I never saw one that had color like this, though. It's almost like a piece

of Venetian glass."

"Keep it, if you like," Thorne offered.

MacInnes poured himself another finger and thumb of Scotch and scrupulously added two drops

of soda. In the center of the table, the small amber eye winked faintly in the sunlight.

Tommy Dittberner liked to walk down the shore after dinner and watch the sand toads play.

There were hundreds of them that came out to feed as soon as dusk fell—little silvery-gray creatures

with big jewel eyes, that swam in the mirror of the water or sat quietly on his hand when he caught

them. There were all sizes, from big fellows over four inches long to tiny ones that could perch

comfortably on his thumbnail.

Tommy came to Port Grand every August, and lived in a resort near the town. He knew he was

not supposed to go too far from the cottage, but it seemed to him that there were always more and

bigger toads just a little farther down the shore.

He would go just down to that sand spit, that was all. Well, maybe to that piece of driftwood

down there. He wasn't lost, like his mother said he would be if he went too far. He knew where he

was; he was almost to the Bug Man's house.

He was funny. He lived by himself and never talked to anyone—at least that's what the kids said.

But Tommy wasn't too sure about that. Once last week the Bug Man and a pretty lady with black hair

had been hiking in the dunes near Tommy's cottage and Tommy had seen him kiss her. Boy, that had

been something to tell the kids!

Here was the driftwood, and it was getting dark. He had been gone since six o'clock, and if he

didn't get home, Mom was going to give it to him, all right.

The toads were thicker than ever, and he had to walk carefully to avoid stepping on any of them.

Suddenly he saw one lying in the sand down near the water's edge. It was on its back and kicked

feebly. He knelt down and peered closely at it.

"Sick," he decided, prodding it with a finger. The animal winced from his touch, and its eyes were

filmed with pain. But it wasn't dead yet.

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