The Harvest

From this dome came the building’s heartbeat—periodic kettledrum throbs, like a distant organic thunder.

And the room smelted strange. Maybe that was the worst of it, Matt thought. It was not a bad smell, but it was wholly alien—as penetrating as nutmeg and as rich as garden loam.

Silently, the three men backed out into the cold January noon.

Chuck Makepeace drove the coast road back into Buchanan, not talking much, his hands clenched on the steering wheel. The road had grown potholes over the winter; the little Nissan bucked and jumped.

“All I want to know,” Kindle said, “is what’s it doing there?”

“My guess?” Matt said. “It’s filtering and pumping water. That’s all. There aren’t enough people to maintain essential services, so the Travellers grew a machine to do it. If we check out the power company we’ll probably find something similar operating the local grid—all the way back to the power plant.”

“Why would they be so interested in keeping Buchanan going?”

“I don’t suppose it’s only us. If they’re ru

“Matthew, do you suppose all our water flows through that thing?”

“It appears to.”

“Well, Jesus—I drank that water!”

“I don’t think they mean to poison us. They could have killed us a long time ago if they’d wanted to.”

Exterminated was the word Rachel had used. They could have exterminated us.

“But it’s control,” Kindle said. “That much is obvious. If they can turn off the lights and shut off the water, they can tell us what to do… We depend on them.”

“Do we? You can dig a well. Nobody’s stopping you.”

“We could dig wells and press lamp oil, but we aren’t going to, ’cause the faucets still work and the lights are still on. So why do you guess they did it? Civic spirit?”

“Maybe,” Matt said. “Maybe because it’s easy for them, so why not? You remember Contact. I don’t like the fact that they’re here, and I don’t like what they’ve done, but I don’t think they did it because they hate us.”

“You believe that?”

He shrugged. “That’s what it felt like.”

“Sure it did. But only a really lousy lie is go

Matt looked at the older man. “Anyway what?”

“Even if they’re Jesus and Buddha in one happy package… who says I want ’em working for me? I mean, how does this go? We get water because the Travellers favored us with a big ugly pump? If it’s a dry spell, do we pray for rain? And if we do, do they send some along?” He shook his head. “I don’t happen to believe in God, Matthew, but if I did, I think I’d prefer the one that works in mysterious ways His miracles to perform. Pray for rain, in other words, but keep the ta

“We’ll get rain enough to suit,” Chuck Makepeace said, ru

Kindle gave him a sharp look. “How would you know that?”

It turned out Chuck Makepeace had heard the news the same way Matt had: through the agency of the Helper.

Twice since Christmas, Matt had gone to stand before that motionless obsidian giant. He had asked it questions: about the Travellers, Rachel’s transformation, the future of Buchanan.

The Helper had answered concisely in a sedate baritone of neutral accent. Beyond that, it had no discernible personality. It spoke to Matt in colloquial English, but he didn’t doubt that it would answer an Iranian in Farsi or a Brazilian in Portuguese.

It was Rachel who had first hinted to Matt about the weather, but the Helper elaborated that warning, described the new and fiercer storms spi

But Chuck Makepeace knew as much about the weather as Matt… because Makepeace had talked to the Helper, too.

Matt arrived at the hospital boardroom unshaven and somewhat lightheaded, five minutes late. He had skipped di

He had hoped to chair a fairly sedate meeting and introduce the storm-warning during New Business. At this point, the best and simplest strategy was to secure a shelter—maybe the basement of the hospital—and stock it with water, food, Coleman lanterns. It was an important job, but not a difficult or costly one.

But the news had arrived before him. Chuck Makepeace had heard it, and so had Bob Ganish and Abby Cushman. All three had been urged by Contactee friends or family to talk to the Helper. All three had done so. And all three had received the same warning: strange and powerful weather moving eastward from the far Pacific.

The news had spread by telephone the day before the meeting, had spread even farther in the crowd around the coffee machine before the Emergency Pla

“By no means,” Paul Jacopetti said. “I haven’t talked to it either. Wouldn’t. Not on a bet. I’m with you there, Mr. Kindle.”

“That’s a consolation,” Kindle said.

Matt called the meeting to order. Nine people took seats and gazed at him. There was no use postponing this; he upturned the agenda and asked for debate or resolutions on the subject of the weather emergency.

Abby Cushman expressed her astonishment: “The Travellers are going to a lot of trouble to help us—as Mr. Makepeace mentioned, they’re keeping our water and electricity on line—so why would they create a storm that might kill us? I don’t understand!”

“I don’t think it’ll kill us,” Kindle said. “Not if we’re careful. As for the logic of it—Abby, by any calculation, they’re a superior species. More powerful than us, at least. I knew a guy in Florida one time, ran a hospital for injured birds. He had a wild heron with a broken beak, and he worked real hard on it, taped the injury, fed the bird by hand until it was strong enough to go free. Finally he released it with a metal tab on its leg for some kind of wildlife census. Three months later, he gets back the banged-up tab with a nasty letter from the FAA: Apparently the bird got sucked into the intake of an Alitalia 747.”

Abby looked dismal. “I still don’t understand.”

“Well—the heron got some nice treatment. But that bird shouldn’t have jumped to any conclusions about how safe it is to deal with another species. The fact that we’re getting free electricity doesn’t mean the jets aren’t rolling out onto the tarmac all the same.”

“That’s macabre and terrible,” Miriam Flett a

Kindle regarded her mildly. “Do you disagree, ma’am?”

She thought about it. “No.”

Matt proposed a shelter to be provided in the hospital basement and asked for volunteers for a Storm Precautions Subcommittee, then suggested the whole subject be tabled until there was more substantial information: “We have other business pending, after all.”