False Horizon by Alex Archer Page B

for years. We did some graduate school work together. I always thought he wasn’t serious enough. You know, because he played football and always seemed to be much more interested in sports than in anything to do with science and history.”
    “You were mistaken?”
    “It’s like what you were saying about perspectives just now. Sometimes what’s right in front of our eyes can’t be seen simply because we look at it from only one perspective. Mike was like that. And when I stopped seeing him as a football player, and instead looked at him as someone interested in many of the same things that grabbed my attention, then all of a sudden he became a great friend.”
    “How many times have you worked together?”
    “On again and off again. It’s how it happens in archaeology. You get together with some people for one thing and others for something else. Mike’s teaching now and then takes long sabbaticals to go off and pursue those things he’s really interested in.”
    “Shangri-La being one of them,” Tuk said. He’d had no luck with any part of the cave so far. He ran his hands along the cave wall.
    “Shangri-La is really the thing that drives him hardest,” Annja said. “As long as I’ve known him he’s always had a thing for lost lands and places that seem to defy convention.”
    “I guess Shangri-La is all of that. How long has he been searching for it?” Tuk asked.
    “When we were in school, he wrote a thesis on its existence, which promptly got him laughed out of the first board. It taught him a valuable lesson about his passion.”
    “And what was that?”
    “That sometimes people don’t care how much you love something. If it doesn’t look right or sound like something they want to hear, you may as well be the village idiot. There tends to be an acute lack of respect for passion in our society these days.” Annja paused. “Well, unless it makes money.”
    Tuk nodded. “I think people fear their passion.”
    Annja looked at him. “Do you?”
    He nodded. “Certainly. Passion for something means you don’t care what anyone else thinks about it. You know in your heart that it’s right and that’s all that really matters. You’re unstoppable in your love for something. Not a lot of people are confident or comfortable enough in their own skin to even acknowledge that emotion.”
    Annja smiled. “You’re an interesting guy, Tuk.”
    “Thank you.”
    “And I never thanked you properly for saving our lives earlier,” she said.
    Tuk held up his hand. “Don’t mention it. If I hadn’t found this place, we’d all be in the same situation.”
    Annja turned back to the cave wall and kept pressing at the rock. Tuk watched her for another moment before doing the same. As the edges ran under his skin, he wondered what they could possibly be looking for. A hidden doorway? A trap floor compartment? There had to be something. As Annja said, Mike couldn’t just simply disappear.
    Tuk thought about the phone in his pocket and had the sudden desire to call the man who had hired him. He could let him know about their situation. Perhaps he had some ideas of his own about where Mike might have gone.
    He frowned. That was foolish. How in the world would the man know anything about Mike’s condition aside from what Tuk had told him earlier.
    No, the time to talk to him would be in the morning. Hopefully when he was confirming that he was arranging the rescue for them.
    “Annja?” Tuk asked.
    “Yeah?”
    “Am I right in saying that a missile brought the plane down this afternoon?”
    Annja nodded. “Sure seems to have been a missile. Yeah.”
    “But who would have fired it? I mean, why bother with us at all? It doesn’t make sense.”
    Annja shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Tuk. All I know is the first missile barely missed us and then the second one took off our wing and we crashed as a result.”
    “But there’s something else I don’t understand.”
    “What’s