Vittori shook his head. 'It wasn't here before, Diedrich. Simple.'
I crossed my arms. Behind me, I thought I could feel Kelly Maclnnes smile, but I didn't bother to turn around to see if I was right. She mistrusted government institutions, including her own, but she loathed the United States government.
As it was, we couldn't justify trucking the required diving equipment, mini-subs, and underwater instrumentation high into the Canadian Rockies to find out more about the dimple. So much data had already been collected that it would take years to analyze it in the first place. And the anomaly didn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. The radiation levels just complicated whatever case I might have made for increased allocation of intelligence assets.
The Orion went back to hunting subs in the maritime provinces. The think tanks went back to thinking somewhere else. Some cameras and sensors remained, wired in around the lakeshore, shooting telemetry back to my agency in Maryland. Other than that, only the satellites still provided us with information, along with the occasional research team willing to sign their souls away in indemnity clauses. A bare-bones contingent continued to secure the perimeters of the park, all volunteer agents at exorbitant pay for assurances that they wouldn't seek damages if they ever showed signs of sickness that could be attributed to radiation.
By the time the first snow fell, I was left alone to observe the astonishing natural beauty of Yoho National Park and the equally attractive Mrs. Kelly Maclnnes. Just me, after all the attention and the hardware went away, with a dosimeter, a sixteen-foot bass boat, and lots of time.
We ate corned beef hash and canned peaches in the echoing stillness of the lodge's dining hall. The worst of winter was past, but it was damned cold anyway, and we wore down jackets everywhere -and extra layers when we dared to go outside.
'At least he picked a national park,' I said, looking around the empty lodge. My visits to Emerald Lake had been getting longer and longer over the winter. The agency kept me largely free, since it was hard to get anyone else to come up here with the threat of contamination. Not to mention the godawful remoteness.
And then there was Kelly. Nick knew what he was about, choosing this woman with the loyalty of a lioness. Though at times I rather imagined it was she who had done the choosing.
She smiled. 'Quiet place, facilities nearby, eh, Mr. Diedrich?'
'I was thinking more in terms of access control. Difficult to secure and patrol private land.'
Her big laugh rang out louder than was natural in the empty spaces of the lodge. 'Do you see anyone trying to violate your vaunted security in this godforsaken place?'
I grimaced. A psychiatrist would probably have a field day with me -NSA spook falls for married woman who laughs at him.
But what a magnificent laugh it was.
I lowered my forkful of peach. 'Why are you still here in this godforsaken place?' Kelly still had plenty of money-Nick's misadventures in orbit had barely depleted his fortunes, even after the staggering fines assessed against his estate for sundry air traffic and orbital protocol violations. She could have checked on the dimple then headed for Tahiti.
She cocked her head. 'I could ask the same question, with more justification. I'm waiting for my husband, making sure you lot don't muck up his chances of returning. Keeping my eye on the dimple. What are you waiting for, Mr. Diedrich? Why do you keep coming back?'
I couldn't give her a true answer, not one that she would accept.
The melting of the snow was like a revelation.
Patches of green appeared in the unremitting white of the landscape just as the first anniversary of Nick Maclnnes's telephone call from the stars approached.
In celebration of one or the other, Kelly and I hiked out to the lake to inspect the dimple. All winter long, it hadn't frozen over, despite the blankets of snow on all sides, despite the fact that other lakes in the region were solid sheets of ice.
The dimple still appeared much as it had the first day I had seen it, even with the snow on the north side of the lake-wide, unnatural, a mystery to be solved.
And the key stood next to me.
'In some ways I'm waiting for the same thing as you, you know,' I said finally.
She was silent for a long time. I knew she understood me -during the time we had spent together over the last winter, we had developed that odd pattern of shortcuts and silences that many married couples use to communicate. I just barely remembered it from my own failed marriage.
She nodded out at the dimple. 'You were born in the United States?'
Non sequitur. We had advanced to those as well. But I still didn't know where she was going with this. 'Yes.'
'You've been on the winning team all your life. You don't have a clue what it's like to be Canadian, having the world's biggest brother next door.' A hare hopped into our line of vision. I watched it make tracks in the snow left in the sun's shadow.
'The United States,' Kelly continued, not looking at me. 'The 'we did it first' country. You build the space shuttle, we build a robot arm. Canada makes another contribution to progress.'
She seemed to expect a serious answer. I didn't give it to her.
'And now your government keeps sending you here to babysit me. Because the hard men with the bright lights didn't learn anything.'
'No one is forcing me.'
She gave me a look that asked me whom I thought I was kidding, one eyebrow raised and her wide lips somewhere close to a smile. 'No, but I know why you're here. You hate it, the whole world hates it, but especially you Yanks. You hate that a Canadian went to the stars first, without you.'
She was partly right.
But only partly.
Kelly was a hard nut to crack, laughter or no laughter. It wasn't until we'd been alone together regularly for almost a year before she started calling me by my first name.
Even though I had been waiting for it for what seemed forever, I almost didn't notice. We were out on the lake in the park's Ranger Cherokee to take some measurements of our own of the surface temperature near the dimple, cross-checking the instruments. My Geiger counter kept acting up -the third one the agency had sent me -but there was nothing wrong with our old-fashioned thermometers.
I had no interest in taking the boat into the middle. The drop to the flat surface of the dimple was about ten feet and looked vaguely like a ring of waterfalls.
'I'm keeping at least five boat lengths away,' I said. 'We'll circle.'
Kelly trailed the thermometer on a length of fishing line. 'Fine with me, Bruce.'
I was so busy navigating the rim of the dimple, the fact that she had called me 'Bruce' didn't immediately register. When it did, it was like a kick to the gut, and I jerked the tiller toward the edge.
I corrected immediately, and Kelly looked up. 'Temperature holding steady here. What about you?'
'I'm fine.'
The pines whistled with the mountain wind; even in July, it was chilly up here. As I drove the boat, I watched a hawk work the thermals off toward the granite massif that sheltered the headwaters of the Kicking Horse River. There was something seriously wrong with me if Kelly's use of my first name felt as intimate as a kiss.
It was about time I called my boss, Marge Williams, and returned to Maryland again for a while.
Somehow, I didn't have much success fleeing Emerald Lake. The next time I came back, I came back for good. The ostensible excuse was Marge's gentle insistence - the government still wanted whatever information Kelly Maclnnes could provide badly enough to make it a permanent assignment. The potential value of what Nick had done, even with its fatal flaws, outweighed any cost of my time and effort.
But the real reason was Kelly. NSA couldn't force me, given the radiation risk- and they didn't have to.
I returned in October. To my surprise, she was waiting at the park landing zone as the helicopter came in.
'What took you so long!' she shouted out over the whirring of the blades as I hopped down from the cabin. 'We've had no less than seven dimple-fans succeed in breaching security since you left.'
'Seven! Guess I better get back on the job.' Of course I had already been informed about the handful of trespassers who weren't bright enough to be scared off by radioactive fallout-Marge had used them as a further
