***
Sammy had seen a lot in his time, but nothing like what he saw when he brought his head around the corner of the cabin on Serenity. He called his boss and described the exit of the aliens into the water and the events on the bay.
"You're not shitting me?" the husky voice asked.
"That a pun?"
"Ha; I guess it was. Anyway, your job is done. Nothing more you can do. Find Lester and you both get back here; you've earned your pay. All I'm after now is keeping my name and yours out of it."
Sammy called Lester's phone, got no answer, and left a message.
John Smith called a number in Seattle. He told the woman who answered about what Sammy had seen. "Could be a Roswell Event?" John asked.
"Sounds like it. I'll pass the message on. Thanks."
"No problem." But it ruined the day's fishing for the old guy.
***
On Seas the Day, two SEAL divers, two HALO special forces, and three tight-lipped men were holding a conference. "Any word from higher up?" one man asked.
"Fat chance."
"Well…"
One of the divers shrugged and said, "Barring a change of orders from the idiots back home, we keep on trying to do what we're supposed to do." He looked around but found no disagreement.
"Do we have to take out that other sonar?"
"Maybe not; they've stopped broadcasting."
"Let's do it. Scan the damned bay."
But a fast survey of the bay, with divers waiting, found nothing but normal debris on the bottom, except for an area in the mud that vaguely looked like the original object, but was clearly just mud.
Seas the Day turned for the open water, heading for Rochester with a hold full of grumpy men. The Cobra gunship passed them a few miles south of High Bluff Island, circled once, and disappeared ahead of them.
***
Serenity, with Sammy in the captain's chair, stayed in the bay until Lester called. Sammy had some wood splinters in one arm to add to the damage he'd had inflicted since he entered Canada. He wasn't in a much better mood than the other Americans, but was cheered up a bit when Lester called.
"Sammy?"
"Lester! How's the prostate?"
"A wonderfully engineered piece of machinery. How's the flatulence?"
"Always handy when I'm feeling antisocial.
"Going to take the boat back to Patricia?"
"Hey, I'm no boat thief. I'll tell her that we ran into that submarine she told us to look for."
"See you in Cobourg, then."
"For sure."
***
Lake Ontario
Three Days after Button Day
Popham Bay cleared out pretty quickly after that. Laura and Tom landed the boat on High Bluff Island, collected Clyde, puttered over to the nearest shore, and managed to horse the Daniels aluminum boat onto a trailer designed for a motorized canoe. Laura and Tom followed Clyde's car back to the Daniels' cottage, where Laura got to supervise Tom, Clyde, Shaman, and Jag as they got the boat back behind the cottage.
"Guess I'll be leaving, now," Jag said, to no one in particular.
"I should think so," Laura said. "Someone's gotta bring back a few cases of beer and some stuff for the barbecue."
Jag blinked. "Too many boys here; not enough girls. Can I bring a guest?"
"Of course," Laura said, after a pause. "Are you sober enough to drive?"
"I think so,"
Jag was back in less than an hour, with lots of beer, frozen hamburgs, and buns (all whole-wheat). And, in the passenger seat, an older woman. Jag introduced her as she stepped out. "This is Josie. She heard there was a party here."
***
At the air base, Cope waited until he was sure the medic had seen Jack Daniels' broken arm. It puzzled the medic, who thought it had broken a couple of weeks before and partially set, but the medic shrugged and put the arm into an inflatable cast.
Cope thanked the helicopter pilot, who said, "No problem." Then Cope drove the Daniels back to their cottage. The brothers curtly refused an invitation to stay for the party, so Tom collected their car keys from where he'd stashed them under their picnic table. Cope drove them back into town, left them by their car, gathered the parking tickets on the car, and watched them leave for Toronto.
Then he stuffed a chocolate cigarette into his mouth and went to Popham Bay to join the party.
***
When the men had the barbecue going, and Josie was getting to know the others, Laura excused herself to get ice cubes from the Daniels cottage. Inside the freezer there were four trays. One was almost empty, two were full, and the bottom one was frozen with a few scraps of vegetable matter caught inside and slightly yellowish in color. She emptied the ice from the bottom tray into a coffee filter and ran warm water until there was nothing in the paper filter but a few strands of broccoli and a few clear stones. She pocketed the stones and took the two trays of ice cubes back over to the others. For the rest of the evening she watched as people used the cubes, but no one seemed to run across anything in their beer but beer and plain ice.
"Cheers," she said every time someone poured beer into a glass and added ice cubes.
***
Damon and John and nine humans who used to host aliens put into Presqu'ile harbor, while John took a cab to get the van, which he'd left in the Provincial Park. When he got back, he offered to drive the nine rather shell-shocked humans back to Toronto.
"Or," he said, "whoever is Katherine Szczedziwoj can drive, and get her van back at the same time. I haven't transferred ownership, yet."
Katherine shook her head. "You can have the van. I intend to get rid of everything associated with that bastard I carried around for most of my good years. Just drive us to Toronto to get the rest of our cars. I'll find a ride to North Tonawanda with Brenda."
"You sure?"
"Oh yeah, I'm sure. We're all sure."
"How can I lose?" John turned to Damon. "See you in Kingston, then."
"Let's hope." Damon seemed at a loss for words. "But if you can get back here before morning, I'll still be here at the marina. Maybe you can get a room."
"Now that sounds like a plan I can endorse."
****
Washington
Three Days after Button Day
In the Pentagon, there were now eight people gathered around a set of monitors. "Is that it?" one guy asked, pointing at a screen displaying a section of Lake Ontario.
"That's it," a gray-haired woman said.
"Are you sure?" a uniformed man asked her. "I thought there was no thermal or magnetic signature to the thing."
"There isn't," a man in plain clothes said. "But the sonar on Seas the Day picked up a reading at the limits of their range, and we're getting thermal stir from the lake.
"Pardon?"
"In shallow waters –water not as deep as oceans – movement stirs the cold deep water a bit, and some of that comes up to the surface. We can follow that as a trail."
"We're still just planning to observe?"
"That's the plan, but now that we know it's something special, we plan to do a lot of observing if it takes off."
"And if it just sits in a deep hole? I see it's heading for the deeper parts of the lake."
"Then we'll have lots of time to think of things to do."
The conversation went around the table. "Just how many aircraft are we sending in?"
"Yeah. We could scare the crap out of that ship."
"A dozen planes and helicopters, maximum. We assume whoever's down there knows the difference between observational planes and warcraft – which we're not using, anyway."
"We assume…."
"What do we tell the Canadians?"
"We tell them that the boat Seas the Day is lost and in trouble and we're trying to find her."
"That's a lot of planes to find a boat. Will they buy it?"
"Will we buy more of their softwood lumber?"
****
Ward's Island
Three Days after Button Day
"Now what do you do?" Barb asked Darkh.
"Well. I guess I'll have to get another hobby." Darkh inspected his beer at the table on the deck of the Rectory Café as the sun went down. Then he smiled. "I'll think of something."
"There are more ghosts," Barb noted.
"Well, I guess. But I was just trying to find out if basic physics covered everything in the universe. I wanted to know if there was a supernatural as well as a natural." He paused. "Done that now. Like climbing Mount Everest; there's not much point in doing it twice. Although some people do, anyway."
"When a person opens a great door," Olnya said, "and finds a fog, then that person should wait. Another door will soon appear."
Darkh smiled. "You know that?"
Gabriel Dumont spoke. "She knows that." He looked at Olnya. "I don't know how I know that, but I know that."
"And you," Darkh asked Gabe. "What do you do now?"
"I have no idea." Gabe shook his head. "I get a bit nervous about it if I think about it, but then I realize that…."
"Dying once has its benefits," Barb laughed.
Then Darkh said, "Can I believe any of this, other than the ghost? Space aliens? Guys claiming to be reincarnated buffalo hunters?"
About that time, as the twilight was settling in and the lights of Toronto were going from bright to mystical, Olnya said, "It's time."
"Time for what?" Barb wanted to know.
"Time to follow me to the water," Olnya said, walking off down the path to the harbor. "I have to leave now."
She walked quickly, so it wasn't until they got to the dock that the other three caught up to her. There were shouts echoing across the bay, and some background noise. The ferry, docked at the wharf, was making grating sounds and tilting.
"Is it sinking?" Darkh asked, watching people scramble off the boat.
"A water monster is drinking," Olnya said, taking off her clothes. "The noise is the water draining out of the bay." She unhooked a dinghy attached to the far side of the wharf and got in. "Goodbye!" she waved as it was pulled into the bay by the retreating water. By this time the front end of the ferry was well below the wharf level, its front end grating on rocks. A flash of light caught Olnya standing in the dinghy for a moment against the lights of the city.
"Tsunami?" Barb asked, sounding panicked.
"If it is," Darkh said, "there's nothing we can do on an island like this. But I don't think so; on a lake as small as Ontario, we'd have felt the earthquake first."
"What's that sound?"
"Probably the noise of the bay waters draining out into the lake past the narrows. And people yelling."
"Now what?"
"Well," said Darkh, "we might want to go over to the lake side and watch to see what happens there."
****
Lake Ontario
Three Days after Button Day
Late in the afternoon there were fifteen American aircraft cruising just south of the international boundary in Lake Ontario. A search-and-rescue helicopter from Rochester was facing a search-and-rescue helicopter from Trenton. Both of them were more or less over the Seas the Day, which seemed to be neither lost nor in trouble, and since the boat was still in Canadian waters for another few minutes, a short helicopter duel ensued, each trying to get higher than the other and chuck non-essential equipment down onto the other.
About then the waters boiled and a gleaming blue-and-pink egg-shaped blob emerged from the surface of the lake. For a moment it hung there, then splashed back into the water and disappeared from sight. All the aircraft pulled back immediately, but nothing happened for a couple of hours except that the sun set and the helicopters and a few planes returned to base. And the water in Rochester Harbor drained into the lake. Some of the boats that hadn't been properly tied jammed together at the entrance before a few sank and the rest went into the lake.
***
Sammy almost made it to Cobourg before the water started running away. He was in no hurry – this was a solo vacation with a case of beer, a carton of donuts, and an autumn afternoon. He didn’t even monitor events until he got a priority call on his cell phone.
"Sammy?"
"Ahoy, Lester!"
"Stop drinking beer and eating donuts."
"I wouldn't do that."
"Great. Then you'll be perfectly able to handle an emergency nautical situation that's come up."
"No problem. Who's in trouble?"
"You, for one?"
"Pardon? Storm coming?"
"We wish. It looks like the lake's draining away."
Sammy sat up. It was getting dark and he could see the lights of Cobourg harbor ahead. "Pardon?"
"That's the information I'm getting. You're about to be caught in a riptide – a current – heading into the middle of the lake. I don't know what happens when you get there, but you might not want to find out."
"For real?"
"For real. Get onto land as quick as you can, if it's not too late."
"Got it."
Sammy put the engines on full and pointed Serenity at the harbor lights. He almost made it; he was within half a mile when the GPS showed him he wasn't getting anywhere and the motor started kicking up rocks and mud. He left the motor running, and chucked the anchor overboard. After a moment the motor shuddered to a stop. The anchor held, and Sammy turned on the radio to catch up on the news. Then he called Lester to say he was okay for the moment. Finally, he opened a beer, took a donut, and tried to decide whether to try walking through the mud in the dark to the shore. It looked like a bad idea, unless the water was going to come back fast enough to overwhelm the boat. After a minute, Sammy raised the anchor. The boat stayed where it was, tilted a bit and deep in mud. Sammy sat back to think.
***
John Height got back to Gosport shortly after ten, traffic having been good for a change. He'd left the ten people close to the various parking spots where they'd left their cars, then, after being assured that the van was still his – "the starter's probably not going to last," Katherine had said – he'd driven back listening to the collection of Tom Russell CDs that had come with the car.
When he pulled the van into the marina parking lot, Damon came to meet him. Apparently, Damon was with a group of other people down at the dock.
"Problems"? John asked.
Damon beckoned John to the docks. "You gotta see this." There were men and women standing on the docks, some with flashlights, most with beer. All the boats were sitting in the mud on the bottom of the Presqu'ile Bay. Back in the bulrushes a few fish, probably carp, thrashed around. "What do you think?" Damon asked.
John looked at it for a long time. "Just this bay, or more?"
"All of Lake Ontario's gone," a tall women said. "That's what the radio says."
"Tsunami?"
"Not likely," Damon told him. "If it were, it would have been here by now. Nobody really knows how it happened."
"I know," John said. A crowd of people turned towards him. He pointed at Damon and said, "This son-of-a-bitch fired a cannon at an American boat this afternoon!" Into the silence that followed, he shouted, "and now the Damn Yanks have taken all our water in revenge!" He turned to Damon. "You still got those bottles of Pusser's Rum in the boat? Any excuse for a party, as Jimmy Buffet would probably tell us."
Damon nodded. "Finally, someone with a bit of common sense."
***
Jag got the call while he was checking to see if the Daniels had left a bit of cilantro anywhere. He found lots of baked beans, lentils, sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, asparagus, sauerkraut and cauliflower instead. "Those guys must really have been popular in an elevator," he said. "These things cause a lot of gas. I know. What's that?"
"Someone want you," Shaman, who had gone with Jag, said.
"Phone call," Josie shouted. "Police department looking for Jagger R. Stone!"
"Cripes," Jag said to Shaman. "Why now? You guys almost had me convinced about these space a
liens. Another couple of beers and I'd have been figuring it was possible."
Jag listened and nodded, and explained that he was in no shape to drive. A few more hmms, and he said he'd be waiting.
"They need me," he explained, "drunk or sober, as long as I can get the uniform on. Something about all the water draining from the lake and people taking to the hills in case there's a tsunami." He looked around. "Shall we walk to the lake while we're waiting?"
Which meant that they were standing on what used to be the edge of Popham Bay when a black-and-white pulled up to get Jag. He gave Laura a surprise hug, then left.
****
Just before dawn the planes keeping watch saw the blue-and-pink egg-shaped blob rise suddenly above the water, flash brightly, then disappear with a bang. At the same time, those planes found themselves back a few miles, still flying normally.
At dawn there were many aircraft, military and civilian, over the lake, assessing the situation and searching for people who'd been on boats dragged away. They found a shallow remnant lake no more than twenty miles across, slowly rotating. Later reports confirmed that there had, apparently, been no boat-sucking whirlpool on the surface, just the disappearance of most of Lake Ontario's water.
There were, however, lots of boats, including the Seas the Day and Trantor, as well as a couple of lake freighters and an ocean-going cargo ship, floating among the debris. Anyone who had stayed on their boat, and had not been snagged by something as they were pulled away from shore, was fine. A fair number of the people who had fallen into the water or tried to escape their boats had survived as well. Helicopters shuttled people back to shore all day.
****
Chapter 9: In the Days and Weeks After
There was intense speculation in the media and social media, but then, there's always intense speculation there. Some quoted the few scientists who talked about a miniature black hole striking the planet. Most generally ignored the many scientists who claimed the event met none of the characteristics of any black hole in their mathematics, since they couldn't offer an alternate view. Scientists came in droves to the shores, many hiring farmers with tractors, and some succeeded in getting partway into the lake. The rest of surface exploration was done by pontoon-equipped helicopters, at least until one or two got stuck in the mud. Most scientists tried to get onto the abandoned boats still afloat, but there were plenty of military people there first.