Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road

She watched the hopes of the parents fade, watched the boy’s struggles weaken, watched the relatives file one by one into the room to take their leave. The wind worked at the windows and the frail flame in the brazier sputtered and gasped.

Whatever your judgment—

“Mentor?”

“I do not know.” She resented their importunities. Why did they demand so much of her, as if the divine power were hers to wield?

In the hour after midnight, the thin body ceased its struggles, the labored breathing stopped, and Avila closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. The mother tried to gather him to her breast and the father slumped against the wall, whispering his son’s name as if to call him back.

Shanta, accept to your care Tully, who lived only a handful of years in this world.

On the way back to the Temple, Sarim asked whether she was all right. “I’m fine,” she said. And then, after a couple of silent minutes: “What’s the point of a god who never intervenes?”

The young Avila had loved riding along the banks of the moonlit Mississippi with her father, hoping that Lyka Moonglow would put in an appearance.

No one has seen her for a long time, Avila. She’s shy and prefers to come when no one is about. But your grandmother once saw her.

There had been times when Avila was sure she’d also seen Lyka, a quick burst of iridescence skimming the dark waters, a glowing curve much like a smile in the night. But she’d understood that the adults were amused by her claims even while they pretended to be amazed by them. In those days, the skies and the forest had been full of divine power, voices speaking to her, unseen hands turning the inner workings of day and night.

It was a vision she’d never forgot, even when tensions had risen in the family, and she’d run off to Farroad where for three years she’d danced and played for the men who worked the river.

Men had fought over her in those days. And one, whose name she’d never known, a young one not yet twenty, had died. She’d knelt in the street that night with her arms full of blood and felt for the first time the presence of the Goddess.

What more natural than that Avila Kap would, at the somewhat late age of twenty-two, enter the Order of Shanta the Healer, and dedicate herself to a life of service to gods and men?

It had been a fulfilling existence. During the early days she’d heard divine footsteps beside her in the dark streets as she hurried to assist stricken families. But in time the sound had faded, like voices in a passing boat. On the night that Tully had slipped away, she’d returned to her cubicle, warm against the chill rain, and had lain awake well into the dawn, sensing nothing in the dark, no power, no spirit lingering to heal the healer, no whispered assurance that there was purpose to it all.

She was alone. They were all alone. What had the young man, the one they called Orvon, said at Silas’s seminar? We may be seeing only what we wish to see. She had sensed in him a desire to believe, and a smoldering anger.

But if no god went with her into the night, how was it that the medicines worked?

But then, why did they not always work? She knew the dogmatic answer, of course: It was not always Shanta’s will that a cure be effected. But then, if the matter depended on Shanta’s will, why bother with the medicines and the curatives at all?

During the two weeks that elapsed after Tully’s death, Avila Kap had been locked in a dark struggle of the soul. She felt her old self slipping away, everything she believed in, everything she cared about.

She now knew she was going to leave the Order. It was not an easy choice. The world outside was hostile to ex-priests. Even persons who paid little heed to their religious obligations seemed to feel a duty to show their moral uprightness by mistreating those servants of the gods who had abandoned their posts. But she could no longer pretend to believe.

The real issue now was simple: What could she find to replace the Order, to give meaning to her life? She was well educated and could support herself easily enough. But she did not wish to devote herself exclusively to making money.

In other times, when she’d faced difficult choices, she’d retired to the green chapel, which was named for the variety and profusion of plants that lined its walls and surrounded its altar. Invariably she’d come away with a solution. Now, however, she remained in the community areas or in her quarters. And when other late-night calls came, she went out as she always had, clinging to her dying faith as tightly as the families she visited clung to their dying fathers and wives.

Silas hired four people to begin the task of making copies of Connecticut Yankee. Each worked on a separate volume, of course. (Esthetics prohibited multiple types of handwriting in a single book.) Later, when they had several copies to work with, they would expand the operation. Eventually, Silas expected, a hundred or more bound volumes would circulate through the five cities.

There’d been a brief debate about modernizing the language. Silas had argued that they retain the original, in that it was still easily readable. He also believed no one could do it justice. The board had squirmed a bit, but conceded the point.

There were original copies of the other two extant Mark Twain fragments, from “The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract” and Life on the Mississippi. Now, with the addition of a complete Connecticut Yankee, there was a large enough body of work to begin a serious evaluation of the Roadmaker writer. Silas wondered what lessons Mark Twain, standing with him in Illyria, would have drawn from the ruins of his civilization.

Silas had written over thirty commentaries on various aspects of ancient and modern literature, ethics, and history. Only one, “Brave New Hyperbole,” had ever been committed to permanent form and placed in the library. (Now, years later, the title embarrassed him.) “Hyperbole” argued that Huxley’s book was in fact a speculative fantasy rather than an accurate depiction of Roadmaker technologies and ethics. He wasn’t sure he was right, but he trembled at the possibility that civilization could descend to such horror.

Now he was recording his impressions of Connecticut Yankee. There was simply nothing like Mark Twain in the entire panoply of League literature. The closest approach was probably the wry comedies of the Argonite playwright Caper Tallow. But even Tallow seemed a bit droll at the side of this Roadmaker humorist.

Silas took extreme care with his commentary, because he knew many others would follow. And because he was first, his remarks would draw attention, either as an example of insight or ineptitude. He sensed that this single document would make his reputation, one way or the other, for posterity.

He’d been working, off and on, almost a month on the project and felt so good about the result that he was violating an old rule by showing his progress to some of the other masters. They were impressed, but in the way of such things, they gave all the credit to Mark Twain.

On the day that Silas finished his final draft, Chaka Milana rode up to his front door. He had just put his writing materials away and was getting ready to walk across the street for dinner. She smiled triumphantly at him as she climbed down from Piper. “I can’t guarantee Haven,” she said, “but I think it’s possible to go where Endine went.”

She led him to the Lost Hope, a nearby pub, where a tall, dark-skinned man with thick black hair and a clipped beard sat at a corner table. “Silas,” she said, “I’d like you to meet Jon Shannon.”

Silas extended his hand. Shannon put down his beer. “Pleased to meet you, Silas,” he said.