Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road (v1) [rtf] Read online

  “Eternity Road” by Jack McDevitt

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The part of me that writes has always included a second person. Thanks, Maureen.

  I'd also like to extend my appreciation to Ralph Vicinanza, and to Caitlin Blasdell, and John Silbersack at Harperprism. To Dolores Dwyer for edito­rial assistance. To Charles Sheffield for his comments on the manuscript. And to Elizabeth Moon, who knows horses, and who would have been a valuable addition to the second expedition.

  I asked him how far we were from Hartford. He said he had never heard of the place.

  —Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

  prologue

  They came during the October of the World,

  Riding the twilight. To ensure that men would not forget.

  —The Travels of Abraham Polk

  The boy was waiting in the garden when Silas got home. "He's back," he whispered, and held out an envelope.

  The boy was one of two who had been employed to take care of Karik's villa during his absence. Silas was surprised: He had expected Karik Endine to return with horns playing and drums beating. Or not at all.

  The envelope was sealed with wax.

  "How is he?"

  "Not well, I think."

  Silas tried to remember the boy's name. Kam. Kim. Some­thing like that. He shrugged, opened the envelope, and removed a single sheet of folded paper.

  SILAS,

  I NEED TO SEE YOU. TELL NO ONE. PLEASE COME AT ONCE.

  KARIK

  The expedition had been gone almost nine months. He stared at the note, produced a coin and held it out. Tell him I'm on my way."

  The sun was moving toward the horizon, and the last few nights had been cold. He hurried inside, washed up, put on a fresh shirt, and took a light jacket from the closet. Then he burst from the house, moving as quickly as dignity and his fifty years would permit. He walked swiftly to the Imperium, took Oxfoot from the stables, and rode out through the city gates along River Road. The sky was clear and red, fading toward dusk. A pair of herons floated lazily over the water. The Missis­sippi boiled past the collapsed Roadmaker bridge, swirled between mounds of shapeless concrete, flowed smoothly over submerged plazas, broke against piles of bricks. No one really knew how old the bridge was. Its supports made wakes, and its towers were gray and forlorn in the twilight.

  A cobblestone trail led off to the right, passed through a stand of elm trees, and emerged on a bluff. A long gray wall, part of a structure buried within the hill, lined the north side of the road. Silas examined the gray stones as he passed, wonder­ing what the world had been like when that mortar had been new. The wall ended abruptly; he rounded the hill and came in view of Karik's villa. It was a familiar sight, and the recollec­tions of earlier days spent here with wine, conversation, and friends induced a sense of wistfulness. The boy who had brought the message was drawing water from the well. He waved. "He's waiting for you, sir. Just go in."

  The villa faced the river. It was an elaborate structure, two stories high, built in the Masandik tradition with split wings on the lower level, balustrades and balconies on the upper, and a lot of glass. Silas gave the horse to the boy, knocked at the front door, and entered.

  It hadn't changed. Autumn-colored tapestries covered the walls, and shafts of muted light illuminated the sitting room. The furniture was new, but of the same style he remembered: ornately carved wood padded with leather. The kind you might have seen in the ruling homes during the imperial years.

  Karik was seated before a reading table, poring over a book.

  Silas barely recognized him. His hair and beard had turned almost white. His skin was loose and sallow, and his eyes had retreated into dark hollows. Their old intensity had dwindled into a dim red glow. But he smiled, looked up from the pages of hand-written text, and advanced through a cross-pattern of pink sunlight with his arms extended. "Silas," he said. "It's good to see you." He clasped Silas and held him for a long moment. Out of character, that was. Karik Endine was a man of cool temperament. "You didn't expect me back, did you?"

  Silas had had his doubts as the months wore on. "I wasn't sure, "he said.

  The boy came in with water and began filling the contain­ers in the kitchen.

  Karik motioned Silas into a chair, and they made small talk until they were alone. Then Silas leaned toward his old friend and lowered his voice. "What happened?" he asked. "Did you find it?"

  The windows were open. A cool breeze rippled through the room. Curtains moved.

  "No."

  Silas felt an unexpected rush of satisfaction. "I'm sorry."

  "I don't think it exists."

  "You mean your information was wrong and you don't know where it is."

  "I mean I don't think it exists." Karik extracted a bottle of dark wine and a pair of goblets from a cabinet. He filled the goblets and handed one to Silas.

  "To Haven," said Silas. "And old friends."

  Karik shook his head. "No. To you, Silas. And to home. To illyria."

  While they drank off the first round, the boy brought Silas a damp cloth. He wiped the dust of the road from his face and draped the cloth around his neck. "Feels good."

  Karik's gaze was distracted and remote. "I missed you, Silas, "he said.

  "What happened out there?" asked Silas. "Did everyone get back okay?"

  The older man's expression remained rock hard.

  "Who did you lose?"

  The Mississippi was visible through the windows. Karik got up, looked out at it, and finished his wine. "Everybody," he said. *I came home alone." His voice shook.

  Silas lowered his glass, never taking his eyes off his old friend. "What happened?"

  Karik's breathing was loud. "Two drowned in a river. Oth­ers dead from exposure. Disease. Bad luck." His eyes slid shut. "All to no purpose. You were right."

  A flatboat came into view. It navigated carefully into a wing channel on the west side of the ruined bridge. Its deck was piled high with wooden containers.

  Silas swallowed his own disappointment. It was true he had maintained stoutly that Haven was mythical, that the expedi­tion was an exercise in fantasy; but part of him had hoped to be proved wrong. Indeed, he had lain at night dreaming how it would be if Abraham Polk's treasures actually existed. What it would mean to find a history of the Roadmakers, to learn something about the race that had built the great cities and highways, what they had dreamed of. And perhaps even to recover an account of the Plague days.

  Eleven dead. Silas had known most of them: the guide, Landon Shay; Kir, Tori, and Mira from the Imperium; Arin Milana, the artist; Shola Kobai, the daredevil ex-princess from Masandik. There was Random Iverton, a former military officer turned adventurer; and the scholar Axel from the academy at Farroad; and Cris Lukasi, the survival expert. And two whom Silas had not known, save to shake their hands as they set out on rain-damped River Road and headed into the wilderness.

  Only the leader survived. He looked at Karik and knew his old friend was reading his thoughts.

  "It happened," he said. "I was just luckier than the rest." Pain came into his eyes. "Silas, what do I tell their families?"

  "Tell them the truth. What else is there?"

  He faced the window, watching the barge. "I did everything I could. Things just broke down."

  "Do you have a list of next of kin?" asked Silas.

  "I was hoping you'd help me put one together."

  "All right. We can do that. Tonight, you should invite them

  here. Before they find out you're home and start wondering where their relatives are."

  "Some of them are from other cities."

  "D
o what you can. Take care of the others later. Send mes­sengers."

  "Yes," he said. "I suppose that is best."

  "Get to as many people as you can. Bring them here this evening. Talk to them together. Tell them what happened."

  Karik's eyes were wet. "They won't understand."

  "What's to understand? The people who went with you knew there was a risk. When did you get home?"

  Karik hesitated. "Last week."

  Silas looked at him a long time. "Okay." He refilled the cups and tried to sound casual. "Who else knows you're back?"

  "Flojian."

  His son.

  "All right. Let's get it over with. Listen: The people who went with you were volunteers. They understood there was danger, and their families knew that. All you have to do is explain what happened. Give your regrets. It's okay. They'll see you're hurting, too."

  Karik folded his arms and seemed to sag. "Silas," he said, "I wish I'd died out there."

  They fell into another long silence. Silas picked up a tablet and began writing down names. Fathers. Sisters. Axel's daugh­ter, who was a relative of Silas's, having married his cousin.

  "I don't want to do this," said Karik.

  "I know." Silas poured more wine. "But you will. And I'll stand up there with you."

  1

  ft is a fond and universally held notion that only things of the spirit truly endure: love, sunsets, music, drama. Marble and paint are subject to the ravages of time. Yet it might be argued that noth­ing imperishable can move the spirit with quite the impact of a ruined Athenian temple under a full moon.

  There was something equally poignant in the wreckage the Roadmakers had left behind. One does not normally equate concrete with beauty. But there it was, formed into magnifi­cent twin strips that glided across rolling hills and through broad forests, leaped rivers, and splayed into tributary roads in designs of such geometrical perfection as to leave an observer breathless. And here, in glittering towers so tall that few could climb them in a single day. And in structures whose elegance had survived the collapse of foundations and roofs.

  The engineering skills that created them are lost. Now the structures exist as an integral part of the landscape, as familar to the children of Illyria as the Mississippi itself. But they no longer serve any function save as a tether to a misty past.

  Perhaps most striking, and most enigmatic, among them is the Iron Pyramid. The Pyramid dominates the eastern bank of the river. Despite its name, it is not made from iron, but from a metal that some believe is artificial. Like so many Roadmaker materials, if seems to resist rust and decay. The structure is 325 feet high, and its base measures approximately a quarter-mile on a side. It's hollow, and the interior is given over to vast spaces that might have been used to drill an army, or to con­duct religious exercises.

  Roadmaker cups and combs, dishware and jewelry, toys

  and knickknacks have been excavated from the ruins and now fill the homes and decorate the persons of the Illyrians. They too are made of material no one can duplicate; they resist wear, and they are easy to keep dean.

  Rinny and Colin rarely thought of the ruins, except as places they'd been warned against. People had fallen through holes, things had fallen on them. Stay away. There were even tales that the wreckage was not quite dead. Consequently, ado­lescents being what they were, they favored the ancient con­crete pier a mile north of Colin's home when they wanted to drop a line in the water.

  On this day, rain was coming.

  The boys were fifteen, an age at which Illyrian males had already determined their paths in life. Rinny had established himself as a skilled artisan at his father's gunmaking shop. Colin worked on the family farm. Today both were charged with bringing home some catfish.

  Rinny watched the storm build. When it hit, they would take shelter in Martin's Warehouse at the foot of the wharf. Martin's Warehouse dated from Roadmaker times. But it was still intact, a worn brick building with its proud sign announcing the name of the establishment and business hours. Eight to six. (The Preser­vation Society kept the sign dean for tourists.) Colin shifted his weight and squinted at the sky. "Something better start biting soon. Or we're going to be eating turnips again tonight."

  So far, they had one fish between them. "I think they've all gone south," said Rinny. A damp wind chopped in across the river. It was getting colder. Rinny rubbed his hands and tight­ened the thongs on the upper part of his jacket. On the far side, a flatboat moved slowly downstream. They were rigging tarps to protect themselves from the approaching storm. "Maybe we better think about clearing out."

  "In a minute." Colin stared hard at the water as if willing the fish to bite.

  The clouds were moving out over the river from the oppo­site shore. A line of rain appeared. Rinny sighed, put down the carved branch that served as a fishing pole, and began to secure his gear.

  "I don't understand it." Flojian Endine stood away from the bed so Silas could see the body.

  Karik seemed to have shrunk year by year since his abortive expedition. Now, in death, it was hard to remember him as he had been in the old days. "I'm sorry," said Silas, sus­pecting that he was more grieved than Flojian.

  "Thank you." Flojian shook his head slowly. "He wasn't the easiest man in the world to live with, but I'll miss him."

  Karik's cheek was white and cold. Silas saw no sign of injury. "How did it happen?"

  "I don't know." A sketch of a wandering river running between thick wooded slopes hung on the wall. It was black-and-white, and had a curiously unfinished look. The artist had titled it River Valley. In the right-hand corner he'd dated it, and signed his name, and Silas noticed with a mild shock that it was Arm Milana, one of the people lost on the Haven mission. The date was June 23, in the 197th year since the founding of the city. The expedition had left Illyria March 1 of that year, and Karik had returned alone in early November. Nine winters ago.

  "He liked to walk along the ridge. See, up there? He must have slipped. Fallen in." Flojian moved close to the window and looked out. "Maybe his heart gave out."

  "Had he been having problems?"

  "Heart problems? No. Not that I know of." Flojian Endine was a thin, fussy version of his father. Same physical model,

  but without the passions. Flojian was a solid citizen, prosper­ous, energetic, bright. But Silas didn't believe there was any­thing he would be willing to fight for. Not even money. "No. As far as I know, he was healthy. But you know how he was. If he'd been ill, he would have kept it to himself."

  Silas, who was a year older than Karik had been, marveled at the indelicacy of the remark. "I'm sorry," he said. "I haven't seen much of him for a long time, but I'll miss him all the same. Won't seem right, knowing he's not here anymore." Silas had grown up with Karik. They'd challenged the river, and stood above the rushing water on Holly's Bridge and sworn that together they would learn the secrets of the Road-makers. They'd soldiered during the wars with Argon and the river pirates, and they'd taken their schooling together, at the feet of Filio Kon of Farroad. Question everything, Kon had warned them. The world runs on illusion. There is nothing people won't believe if it's presented convincingly, or with authority.

  It was a lesson Silas learned. It had served him well when Karik started rounding up volunteers to go searching for his never-never land. Silas had stayed home. There'd been a diffi­cult parting, without rancor on Karik's side, but with a sub­stantial load of guilt on Silas's. "I don't know why I felt a responsibility to go with him," he'd later told whoever would listen. "The expedition was a colossal waste of time and resources and I knew it from the start." Karik had claimed to have a map, but he wouldn't show it to anybody on the grounds that he didn't want to risk the possibility that someone would mount a rival expedition.

  There wasn't much chance of that, but Karik had clearly lost his grip on reality. Haven was a myth. It was probable that a historical Abraham Polk had existed. It might be true that he had indeed gathered a group of refugees
in a remote fortress to ride out the Plague. But the notion that they had emerged when the storm passed, to recover what they could of civiliza­tion and store it away for the future: That was the kind of story people liked to tell. And liked to hear. It was therefore suspect. Silas was not going to risk life and reputation in a misguided effort to find a treasure that almost certainly did not exist. Still, his conscience kept after him, and he came eventually to understand that the issue had not been the practicality of the expedition, but simple loyalty. Silas had backed away from his old friend.

  "He looked well this morning," said Flojian, who had never really moved out of his father's house, save for a short period during which he had experimented unsuccessfully with mar­riage. He'd kept an eye on Karik's welfare, having refused to abandon him when the town damned the old man for cow­ardice or incompetence or both. Had the lone survivor been anyone else, no one would have objected. But it was indecent for the leader to come home while the bones of his people lit­tered distant roadways. Silas admired Flojian for that, but sus­pected he was more interested in securing his inheritance than in protecting his father.

  The river was cool and serene. There had been a time when he'd counted Karik Endine his closest friend. But he didn't know the man who'd returned from the expedition. That Karik had been withdrawn, uncommunicative, almost sullen. At first Silas thought it had been a reaction against him personally. But when he heard reports from others at the Imperium, when it became evident that Karik had retired to the north wing of his villa and was no longer seen abroad, he understood that some­thing far more profound had happened.

  Flojian was in the middle of his life, about average size, a trifle stocky. His blond hair had already begun to thin. He was especially proud of his neatly trimmed gold beard, which he ardently believed lent him a dashing appearance. "Silas," he said, "the funeral rite will be tomorrow afternoon. I thought you'd like to say a few words."

  "I haven't seen much of him for a long time," Silas replied. "I'm not sure I'd know what to talk about."