“So what?” he said, and looked at me with a grin.
“Back then, big maps were compiled from older maps, so this exploration of the Antarctic must have been done before 1500—or whatever that date was. 1515, maybe. But the first known exploration of Antarctica was in the seventeen hundreds.”
“And why do we care about Antarctica?” He was still smiling, as if he suspected the answer.
“Because that shoreline has been under a mile of ice for six thousand years.”
“And what does that tell us?” Tommy said.
“I have no idea,” I said, laughing.
“What it means is that you’re joining Zero line. I was having my doubts about you, Mike. Didn’t know if you could open your mind to it. But you’re coming along, bud. You’ve found evidence of some kind of ancient knowledge that must have been delivered by advanced technology. It’s just another sign. Let’s get up closer to the front. I don’t even know what we’re protesting.”
I nodded and followed him through the crowd until he spotted Jim over on the far side.
I still had reservations. Big reservations. At this point, a lot of arguments had been made, but all of it hinged on whether I could trust Walter. And he wasn’t the easiest person to get to know. He was terse and angry, and he’d spent the entire time at the ranch with a bottle in his hand.
I didn’t trust people who drank like that.
That said, I liked Mary, and I felt like I could trust her. She was so smart, so down-to-earth. And it really did seem like she trusted Walter. Maybe I couldn’t dig up enough belief to trust Walter, but maybe I could put that trust in Mary.
The girl with the megaphone was yelling the same antiwar rhetoric that I’d heard for as long as I’d been paying attention. I was 19, and the Vietnam War had been going on since I was a kid. I hardly remembered a world without it. It was on the news every night, as much a standard as the weather report or the baseball scores.
And so were the protests. I’d been hearing about them forever, it seemed. At times I wondered if America was going to survive this whole thing. There was a war going on far away, and a war going on at home too.
Mary found us at the side of the plaza, against the wall of a building.
“This is amazing,” she said, slipping her arm through mine. Her lips almost touched my ear so I could hear her over the noise.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the lower part of Sproul Plaza was filling up.
“What makes you trust Walter?” I shouted. I hadn’t gotten to see Mary at all this week, and I still felt like we had so much to talk about from the previous weekend.
Mary looked thoughtful. She leaned in and spoke into my ear. “I believe what he has to say. I believe his story, and his mission.”
“But do you trust him?” Right now, my trust in the group rested firmly on the shoulders of Mary and Tommy. If they could trust, I could trust.
“With my life.” She pulled back, and looked at me. “He’s going to officially ask you to join Zero line, Mike.”
I took a deep breath. “Whoa. Okay. So, was last weekend some kind of test? Was it like a tryout to see if I should join your group?”
Mary smiled, sheepish. “Kind of. Look, we have to cover our bases. There have been people who we’ve invited in who have refused. They think we’re crazy. One of them called the police on us—they accused us of being another Manson Family. You’re different. You’ve been to the ranch; the others never came. You met everybody. I’ll be honest: there were a handful of people who thought that you shouldn’t have come up there. But John and I both trusted you.”
“So,” I asked jokingly, “will they kill me if I say no? Do I know too much?”
But Mary wasn’t smiling anymore. “Don’t even kid about that. Of course that won’t happen, but this is serious. I mean, you know—it’s the end of the world. We’re not joking about this, and I would really appreciate it if you didn’t either.”
I glanced around the crowd and saw dozens of police officers standing around the protestors, watching everything. I didn’t know why, but I felt uncomfortable. We weren’t doing anything but listening. We weren’t going to get into trouble. Still, just by talking about Zero line, I felt like we were involved in something wrong. I felt like they were watching me. “Are you angry?” the woman said into the bullhorn.
The crowd shouted back “Yes!”
Mary shouted too, but I could tell she was unhappy for a different reason. She’s upset because I still don’t believe her, I realized.
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” the woman with the megaphone shouted. “We’re not alone. Today, fifteen thousand people marched on Washington to protest the mining of Vietnam’s waters. That’s what we have to remember. We are not alone. And in the coming months and years, we’ll need to remember it even more: we are one people, one civilization, one humanity. It’s not us versus Charlie. It’s not West versus East. It’s not United States versus USSR. It’s one Earth, and we’re fighting for a good cause.”
The crowd cheered. I saw John get up onstage and start making his way toward the speakers. Mary saw him too.
“Damn it, John. Let’s get up there,” Mary said. “We need to get him off the stage. We’re going to meet the La Tène girl tomorrow. We can’t screw this up. He can’t get arrested. He’s AWOL.”
I looked over at Mary, wondering what I was getting myself into.
But I followed. I couldn’t resist the pull she had on me. She held my hand and dragged me through the crowd, up to the stairs.
From there we could see an entirely new column of protestors, off to the north of the stage—another thousand between Sproul Hall and the Student Center.
Someone else took the megaphone, but the police were starting to move in toward us.
The new guy with the megaphone saw the police and immediately changed the subject. “You know what? There’s nothing we can do about Haiphong right now. But I think we can tear down a fence. How many times do we have to mourn our compatriots? How many times do we need to tear down those fences? Everybody to People’s Park!”
Mary and I dashed up the steps. John was about to take the microphone, but we pulled him away just in time. “John, what the hell are you doing? You can’t get on that mic! We’ve got to get out of here. We can’t screw up before tomorrow. What about the La Tène girl? Zero line is on the verge of something big. Things are happening. You’re jeopardizing everything we’ve worked for.” One of the cops was coming up toward us, his nightstick out. There were six of us on the upper plaza—John, Mary and me, and the three protest leaders who’d been speaking before we got there.
John shook his head. “This time will be different. There aren’t many cops. This won’t affect tomorrow.” He pointed around. Everyone was moving toward us.
“John,” Mary said. “Mike and I can get arrested and spend the night in jail. But if you get caught, you’re going to be in real trouble. Without you, Zero line won’t have a leader. You’re going to blow our whole mission for nothing!”
John started walking—we were at the head of the crowd, the leaders in front of the mass of people. “You’re right, Mary. You’re right. Let’s get out of here.”
I could hear the sirens before we got to the park, but that didn’t matter. There were a thousand of us, at least, and there was nowhere for us to go. There were police to our left and right, and behind us was the wave of people. Where the campus sidewalk ended and turned into Bancroft Way, there were only six police cars with flashing lights. People poured into the street to join us.
Mary and I held hands as we went, trying to push back into the crowd, but there was no stopping it: the people behind us were being pushed by the people behind them, and so on all the way back. John tried to weave his way through to get out of the front lines, but it wasn’t working. People kept trying to join arms in a line across the front of the crowd. We were at the tip of the spear, the very front of a massive tidal wave of hundreds of people.
r /> This reminded me of all the protests I’d seen on TV, from draft-card burnings in Boston to the Days of Rage riots to the Kent State shootings. People were killed—students, police, bystanders. But here there were only a couple dozen cops against a thousand of us; they had to retreat.
And I realized for the first time that this was real life, and that Mary was standing next to me, holding my hand. What would I do if this turned violent? And if I was this nervous about a protest, how would I be able to handle something like Endgame?
We wanted to move back through the crowd, away from the cops, but the mass of people was as reasonable as an avalanche.
It won’t turn violent, I told myself. There were too few cops. They’d retreat.
And if they had shotguns again? I’d defend Mary. I’d defend John. I could hold my own in a fight, if it came to that.
“We’re not here for a fight!” John shouted at the cops, but his voice was drowned out in a sea of voices. He took off his hat and turned in a circle. “We’re unarmed. This is a peaceful protest!”
The mob pushed, and Mary and I stumbled a step forward. The whole front line did. Everyone was trying to stop as we faced the roadblock of cop cars, but there were too many people pushing from behind.
One of the officers spoke into a handset on a long cord that stretched into his car window. “We—” EEEEEEE! There was an enormous squawk from the speaker, and the crowd erupted in shouts and laughter. “We order you to disperse! Return to your homes.”
Mary and I got pushed forward again. We were no more than 15 feet from the officers.
“Shit,” she said, starting to panic. “Push back, Mike. We can’t get pushed to the front. Hang on!”
John gestured with one hand to get the cops’ attention. “Just let us pass. There’s no stopping these guys.”
Another shove forward, but I grabbed Mary’s hand tighter and held my ground. I looked behind us and all I could see was an endless sea of people—most of them still marching toward us—packing harder into the mob.
John didn’t have much room now between the crowd and the police.
“Get back,” the officer’s loudspeaker blared.
Another push. There was nowhere to go. John was almost face-to-face with the cop. He had his hands up. “I can’t get back! We don’t want to fight!”
But there was another surge forward—I almost fell to my knees, and Mary had to grab my arm to keep me on my feet.
“No!” Mary yelled. “This is so bad!”
The cop in front of us was getting scared. I could see it in his eyes. His hand went to his gun, but he didn’t draw.
Another officer shouted into his loudspeaker. “Disperse. We order you to disperse.” But nothing was stopping the wave. John was next to me, on my left, Mary was on my right, and all of us were pleading with the cop.
The frightened officer moved his hand to his nightstick and swung.
John ducked his head, but he wasn’t fast enough, and the stick cracked loudly across John’s scalp.
The cop raised the stick again to bring another blow down, but as the nightstick sliced through the air, instinct kicked into gear. I let go of Mary’s hand and dove into the fray.
The nightstick crashed into the back of John’s shoulder, and I tackled the cop, slamming him into his squad car. I didn’t wait to see how he would respond—I suddenly saw myself in all those Friday-night fights Dad and I used to watch. A punch to the stomach and then an uppercut to the chin.
He swung at me with the nightstick, but it was wild, blind, and I avoided it easily and threw a right hook. The cop dropped to the asphalt.
And, just as I looked up, I saw a reporter on the other side of the car pointing a camera at us. I stared at him as the flash popped.
“Damn it,” I said. The mob was splitting around us, some climbing over the car. I could chase the man down, steal his camera, break it, expose the film. But we were being passed by the mob now, as we crouched beside the cop car, and the photographer was lost in a sea of people. The cop in front of us was dazed, and John reached down to take the officer’s gun.
“John!” Mary whisper-yelled. “Put it back! Are you crazy?”
“I don’t want to be shot in the back,” John hissed, blood dripping down his face. He popped out the six rounds from the revolver and broke down the pistol, dropping the pieces to the ground.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it. Shit shit shit.” I dropped back down by the car.
“It’s nothing,” John said, a hand on his scalp. Blood trickled on his hand, face, and jacket.
“No,” I said. “I think a reporter just got pictures of the whole thing, me punching the cop.”
John pulled off his jacket and pressed it against his head. “Let’s go.”
It took the mob nearly 10 minutes to thin out enough for us to head back, swimming against the current.
“Mary, are you okay?” I shouted to be heard as the people poured past us toward the park. John started leading us down an alley, away from the park and the university.
Mary nodded at me. “If the photographer got you, he got me too.”
“Where’s your car?” I asked.
“A couple blocks from here. We’ve got to get you to a hospital—”
John interrupted. “You guys go ahead. I’ve got a place I can go.” While he talked, he kept his eyes on the street, back and forth. “You two have really proven yourselves today, you know? See you at the meeting tomorrow. We may need to move up our schedule, especially if that photo surfaces.” He took a few steps back, then stopped and smiled at me. “Mike,” he said. “There’s no way you can’t join us after this! You’re a part of it now! We all are!”
He whooped and threw his fist into the air, then jogged across the busy road and disappeared into the shadows of another alley. Mary laughed, watching him go.
“You can’t tell me this isn’t all exciting, Mike,” she said. “You wanted to be a part of something bigger. Well, this is it.”
I turned to her. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement; her eyes sparkled. So why did I feel dread creeping into my stomach? “What did he mean, we may need to move the schedule up?” I asked.
CHAPTER SIX
“Don’t worry about the schedule,” Mary said to me, and let out a long breath. “Everything will depend on the meeting with the La Tène Player.”
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s worry about that photo. If that’s in the paper, that’s it for me. I’ll be arrested. Assaulting a cop. That’s gotta be—what? Five years? Ten?”
“It’d be battery,” she said. “Not assault.”
“Why are you being so calm about this?” I said, almost shouting. “This is my life we’re talking about! I’m finally out of my dad’s house and out on my own! I can’t go to prison!”
“I’m not exactly happy about it,” she said. “But panicking isn’t going to help anything. I’m just trying to think. I may have been in that picture too, you know.”
“But you weren’t punching a cop.”
“We don’t know what that picture will be. Maybe it’s a picture of you hitting a cop, but maybe it was taken just before or just after. We don’t need to freak out yet. Who knows? Maybe the shot will be of the policeman attacking John.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Just go back to my dorm and wait?”
She exhaled and folded her arms. “Yes. And if police come to see you, demand to see a lawyer.”
“I can’t afford a lawyer.”
“The court will appoint one for you. But it won’t come to that. You’re overreacting, Mike. Do you know how many marches and protests there have been in this city? About Nixon, Vietnam, freedom of speech, equal rights? People get arrested at every one, and they get a misdemeanor slap on the wrist and they have to pay five hundred dollars, or something like that, and they move on with their lives. No one’s sending you to jail.”
“Unless that picture comes out.”
“Unless that picture comes out,” she agreed.
“But let’s cross that bridge when we get there. Listen: I work in a law office. On Monday I’ll ask them what we should do.”
“I don’t want you to get involved in this.”
She laughed. “Mike,” she said, “I’m more involved in this than you even know.” She ran her fingers through her long hair and leaned back against the brick wall of the alley. “Let’s go get ice cream.”
I snorted. “What?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go get ice cream. There’s a place right down the road.”
“Shouldn’t we be trying to get out of here?”
“Think about it. If that photo is blurry—and it might very well be, because everyone was jostling around—they may not know who exactly it was. So let’s go make an alibi. Act totally normal, like we’ve never been to a protest. We’ll act like it’s a date. Then when the police come looking for you, you can say, ‘No, I wasn’t there. I was at the Creamy Freeze with Mary Nesmith.’ And the employees there will back us up.”
I smiled, my first real smile since we’d gotten into the mob of people.
I didn’t know how Mary was so calm under pressure—I wasn’t, that’s for sure.
“A date, huh?” I nudged her with my elbow.
She rolled her eyes. “I said we’ll act like it’s a date.”
“For now,” I said, grinning. “Okay, let’s do it.”
She reached out her hand, and I took it. Her fingers were cold as I interlaced mine with hers, and my heart began to race. As much as I wasn’t entirely sure of Zero line, I liked that I was doing stuff with her, that when we left the protest, she was going with me. We started walking—quickly so that we could be at the ice cream shop before anyone else from the march could get there.
“So you never answered me. What did John mean by moving the schedule up?” I asked.
“That is a question that is better answered by John,” she said.
“That’s evasive.”
“Not trying to be evasive,” she said. “You ever go to church?”
“What does that have to do with it?”