Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road

“Some of them are from other cities.”

“Do 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.”

It 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 familiar 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 Roadmakers. 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.