The Man from Forever Read Online Free PDF Page A

jerked his head at the other man. “You and I need to get together, Fenton. Come up with something that makes sense.”
    â€œWhat I proposed makes sense. You just need to open up your thinking.”
    The director muttered something under his breath, nodded at Tory, then walked out the door. Not sure what she was supposed to do now, she gave Fenton a tentative smile. “I heard a little,” she admitted. “I know what you mean about budget problems. They never seem to go away, do they?”
    â€œThey will if I can get people to listen.” Fenton, who was maybe three inches taller than her, with the slightest bit of thickening around his waist and a thatch of windblown hair, smiled down at her. “I’m not a walking encyclopedia about the lava beds, but if you’ve got a question, maybe I can answer it.”
    Can you? Can you tell me whether I really saw a man who must be at least a hundred and fifty years old, who looked at me with the most compelling eyes I’ve ever seen? Stammering a little and hating herself for sounding half-bright, she explained that she’d been out on her own this morning but had decided she needed a map and game plan so she wouldn’t risk getting lost. “I love hiking, but I have the suspicion I could get disoriented in short order around here. It’s amazing. From a distance everything looks so level, but once you really look at it, you see all those hills and valleys.”
    â€œYeah, there’s enough of them, all right. You’re here alone?”
    Wary in the way of a woman who has learned to navigate the world on her own, she simply shrugged. She should graba map, ask a couple of questions and get out of here, but after what she’d experienced this morning, a roof felt inordinately comforting.
    â€œSo am I,” Fenton was saying. He introduced himself as Fenton James and she felt obliged to introduce herself in turn. When he stuck out his hand, she did the same. “I’ve been here about three weeks now,” he said. “I thought everyone came as part of a group, mostly families on vacation, sometimes college students or history buffs. Couldn’t you find anyone who wanted to stare at nothing with you?”
    Something about Fenton’s tone didn’t sit right with her, but she didn’t have time to analyze what that was. “I’m on my way to a job,” she said, dismissing the understatement. “I just have time for a day or two of poking around.”
    â€œTwo days. Most people are in and out in an afternoon, unless they take in the caves, which I can’t understand why. Where’s this job of yours? I can’t imagine anyone having to go through here to get to a job.”
    Why Fenton cared what she was up to remained beyond her. However, talking to the man had already taken her thoughts miles away from what she’d seen, or thought she’d seen, earlier. Even if he was trying to hit on her, setting him straight gave her something to do. Besides, he said he’d been at the lava beds for three weeks. If he’d noticed something unexplainable, maybe they could compare reactions. But she doubted that he’d been left feeling as if a huge chunk of what she thought of as her civilized nature had been sucked from him. Keeping the telling as brief as possible, she let him know she was part of the team selected to study some Native American ruins on the Oregon coast.
    â€œHow did you accomplish that?” he exclaimed. “My God, that’s the find of the century! The opportunity for—what are you? An archaeologist?”
    â€œAnthropologist.”
    â€œWhatever.” He shrugged. “I never understood the difference.”
    She could have told him that an archaeologist dealt withthe physical world while anthropologists concerned themselves with things social and spiritual, but what was the point? “You’ve heard of the Alsea discovery, I take