Tomorrow’s World (23 page)

It turned out Doug MacDougall had scanned in over fifty books, all of them about plants—and not one was input in a single continuous session. The most likely explanation for the absence of any digitized chapters from
Lichens and Mosses of the World
seemed to be that, for some reason, Doug had decided not to scan it in. But that didn't ring true. The pencil marks indicated he was writing a thesis about it, and he wouldn't submit a thesis without scanning the book in to give it context. Another explanation was that he'd decided to digitize the book in one long session. But that didn't ring true, either, because he'd never worked that way before, not once in over fifty contributions to The Search, and people tend to be creatures of habit.

The only other thing I could think of was that for some reason there had been a delay in processing his latest entries. I did another search on
Lichens and Mosses of the World
to see if the database had been updated since I last checked.

It had, but not in the way I'd expected.

There was no record of the book's existence at all. Not even in the ISBN catalogue.

Either I'd uncovered some sort of conspiracy, or I was making something out of nothing. Trying to stay calm, I weighed up the evidence. The first time I'd searched for the book, when I was just looking to get a copy of it to read, I'd queried by the author's name because it was shorter than the title. Perhaps there was some fault in the cross-referencing, so the book only came up if you keyed in the author, not the title. It seemed unlikely, but more likely than the other explanation: that someone had removed all reference to the book's existence—and ended Doug MacDougall's life—because of a yellow moss that wasn't even part of any food chain.

So I queried my screen using the author's name.

Nothing.

Not only had no book by that title ever been entered into the database, no such book had ever been published.

So how come there was a copy of it sitting on my desk?

I tried a different tack, concentrating on the plant itself. If
Lichens and Mosses of the World
contained the key to whatever was going on, which seemed increasingly likely, then the book itself was merely a container, and the actual key was the golden yellow substance in the photo. I riffled through the pages and stopped at the one with the picture of
immaculata solaris.
I read the underlined words again: Immaculata solaris,
pictured above, has no common name because it is not commonly known, living only in the most extreme of alpine environments. Studies show it to be remarkable for more than its vivid color and hardiness, for it does not feed on anything but sunlight, and nothing feeds on it.!!!

The important thing had to be the fact that
immaculata solaris
was unique—and the properties that made it so. Over and over again I read the same fifteen or twenty words:
it is not part of any food chain
—
it doesn't feed on anything but sunlight, and nothing feeds on it.

When I knew the words by heart and there was no point reading them any more I turned my attention to the accompanying photograph. But all I saw was a splash of pretty color on a dull gray rock.

Wondering if the words and picture would mean any more to Paula than they did to me—and hoping the attempt to work out their significance would draw us together, as the search for the book itself had—I looked over the top of my screen at her and said, “Does this mean anything to you?”

The voice that answered me came from my hear-ring, not my partner: a ‘Rusher' was running amok in the gym.

We hurried out of the station house.

While we waited for the elevator Paula said, “What were you going to ask, Travis?”

If she'd called me ‘Ben' I would have told her. But I was so irked by the cold ‘Travis' that, to annoy her, I just said, “Never mind.” It was pathetic and childish, I know. My only excuse is that I'd no idea how significant those underlined words truly were.

I'd no idea that Doug MacDougall hadn't been exaggerating when he said they changed everything.

I
DID SOME MORE STARING AT
P
AGE
127
OF
L
ICHENS
and Mosses of the World
when I got home, but before long my thoughts drifted to Paula. I considered calling her to ask for help. Okay, what I really mean is I wanted to call her, and the mystery moss was just an excuse. But she'd see right through me. She'd hear the longing in my voice and, if we met up, she'd see it in my eyes, confirming her belief that love was just another word for desperate, pathetic need.

Maybe she had a point. After all, I missed Jen desperately, and I had to admit there was something pathetic about how much I longed for Paula to open up to me again the way she had while we sheltered from the storm.

Just as I was at a dead end with Doug MacDougall's murder, so I felt caught in a hopeless Catch 22 with Paula: it would take a lot of love to short-circuit the ‘hard-wiring' that made her inherently predisposed to interpret passion as need—and yet the more she saw I loved her, the needier I'd appear.

One intractable problem would have been bad enough; two at once was too much. My head was starting to hurt, so I put Doug's book away and reached for one that would help me forget about his death, and about Paula.

The book I grabbed was
More Than Seven Wonders
by Calum Tait. I let the words and pictures of the long dead travel writer take me away from my own world—with its soul-destroying blacks and whites and shades of gray, its confines and sterility—to a time when the world was a bigger, brighter place and all of it was worth seeing. Although I've read the introduction a hundred times, as often as not when I pick up the book I read those first two pages again, because the words which fill them strike a symphony of chords with me:

If the only traveling you do is along the path of least resistance it can seem like there are only seven wonders in the world. When each day is spent going through the motions, going to the same places and seeing the same faces, life is a lesser thing in some way, in every way; security becomes stagnation and a house becomes a prison.

So what other paths are there to follow? Well, how about these: the Silk Road, the Salt Route, the Frankincense Trail; the Way of a Thousand Kasbahs, the Royal Road of the Incas, the Pacific Crest Trail.

What about traveling back in time, following infamous footsteps and seeing fabled sights in far-off lands…

Or going wherever people are making the most of the present: filling a diary with the dates when people in different parts of the world gather to celebrate the good things in life, then turning the pages and going to the places to find out what form the festivals take; not just being a spectator but adding your life to the celebrations
—
dancing each night away until the music stops or until you drop, not caring where the dance takes you or whether all that it makes you is tired in the end…

Or just picking the name of a wind that sounds enchanting and exotic: the khamsin or sirocco, the chinook, the mistral, the bora
—
finding out where it blows and going where it goes; if it's a warm wind walking into it, if it's a cool breeze keeping it behind you, never knowing where the next day will find you or worrying about that any more than the wind does.

I felt a choke in my throat at the thought that even those old, romantic sounding winds were gone now, their names all but forgotten, replaced by an oppressive, toxic breeze and periodic superstorms that would flatten you rather than carry you to the four corners of the world. How could the people who went before me destroy something as ephemeral as the wind, something that was everywhere and nowhere and epitomized freedom and restlessness? What chance was there for anything else if even the breath of Mother Nature and her wordless, timeless whispering had failed to survive? How could people whose ancestors had the capacity to come up with such musical sounding names as khamsin and sirocco have lost so much of their soul? How had they gained so much knowledge and yet lost so much wisdom?

Those were as baffling as the other questions I'd faced that day, so I turned back to the book.

Learning a little more with each of these days about different lifestyles, what people have in common and what makes them unique… Listening to the rhythm of the language they speak, the music they sing to, the music they dance to, the background sounds that accompany their lives
—
and when you leave each place taking with you some things worth more than any material possessions that money can buy: an understanding of the people you've met and the world they live in, and a deeper understanding of yourself.

I wondered how Calum Tait had felt—a man who obviously hadn't sold his heart and soul, who hadn't bought into the bargain that material things were worth destroying the world for. I wondered if he'd had any idea how quickly the world he was describing would be destroyed; if he'd had any notion that he'd be among the last generations who would be able to see it. And I wondered if he'd experienced any guilt at the fact that, in seeing the world, he'd helped deny to others the very things he so profoundly appreciated himself; the planes he'd criss-crossed the skies in did their bit to add to the lethal pollution.

After a wistful sigh I turned to the first chapter. The photo accompanying it was of a white monument in the shape of a stylized ship's prow with a line of seafarers on it, each looking to the far horizon. The monument was in Lisbon, and the chapter, called
Voyages of Discovery,
was about the spirit that had moved those men as powerfully as the wind that filled the sails of their ships.

Imagine waking up one morning and hearing that a new continent had been discovered. Think of all the wonders such vastness might contain: plateaus and plains; rivers, waterfalls and great mountain chains; mighty civilizations, fallen empires, myths and legends that endured. In their wildest dreams could Columbus and those who followed in his wake have foreseen mountains the shape of Sugar Loaf or a river the length of the Amazon; the stepped pyramid of Kukulcan, the tale of feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, the legend of El Dorado?

Imagine what it would be like to come across such things for the first time. Imagine what it would be like to discover a continent. You just about can imagine it with a monument like Lisbon's one to The Discoverers beside you, with so much history behind you, and an open horizon ahead of you. There's something about distant horizons
—
they do to the imagination what love does to the heart.

I felt that choking sensation in my throat again, accompanied this time by a tightness in my chest, because that one sentence seemed to sum up everything that was missing from my life.

Standing there, I wondered how the horizon must have looked five hundred years ago to someone who had vision as well as simply sight; someone who guessed that the waves of uncrossed oceans broke on distant shores.

Such men helped draw the map of the world depicted in mosaic below the monument to the Discoverers, its shape so different from the crude, hand-copied maps they'd set out with; the maps they'd spread out on sea chests and weighted down with astrolabe and dividers, compass and lodestone, to study in cramped cabins under the light of oil lamps that swung with the swell of the sea.

I thought about how different the maps they brought back looked from those they set out with, and the drama that lay in drawing the differences. I thought about Bartolomeu Dias sailing south of the equator, half-expecting to encounter a ring of fire encircling the middle of the world, and beyond it a torrid zone uninhabitable because of the heat
—
and finding in their place the Gold Coast, Table Mountain and the Cape of Good Hope…

Vasco da Gama, sailing east after south and pioneering the passage to India…

Ferdinand Magellan, sailing around the world without turning to tack back the way he'd come
—
the first time in history a crew traveled so far in one direction they ended up back where they'd started…

And of course Christopher Columbus: maybe it was religious fervor or thoughts of gold or glory that spurred him on, but I like to think he was as interested in the smell of exotic spices as the price they'd fetch if he brought them home. I like to believe he treasured newfound knowledge above wealth… That he wondered what other people's languages sounded like; what clothes they wore and what habits of the other kind they adopted; the shape of their houses and how they built them; the music they made, the steps of their dances, and the stories they told; what gods they feared and worshipped; what games they played, and what they did to fill the last hour of light at the end of each day. I'd like to believe he thought more about those things than about the weapons of war those people carried and how willing they'd be to use them; how they measured wealth and how willing they'd be to share it.

Maybe Columbus didn't wonder about those other things, but it doesn't really matter to me; it's fun just to stand in a place where you can see the sky meet the sea, feel the heartbeat of history inside yourself, dream a greater man's dreams.

Those voyages of discovery made more waves than any ocean. The people who embarked on them didn't just write a couple of pages in the history of the world; they wrote a whole new book. When you stand in a place like the Monument to the Discoverers, that book opens up in front of you. The pages turn themselves and soon you're caught up in tales that awaken a sense of adventure in even the quietest heart.

The first footprints might have faded from the farthest shores, the last of the three-masted ships has long since sailed, the oceans are charted now and the countries all have names; but, standing in the shadow of the monument and looking out to the horizon, it's easy to imagine there are still voyages of discovery waiting to be made.