Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road

The scholar, who was pinched-looking with straw-colored hair, glanced up with obvious irritation. “Do you mind?” he asked.

“Sorry,” said Chaka. An hourglass stood on the worktable Its sands had almost run out. “I’ve got to go anyway,” she said.

“It’s okay,” said Quait. “I’ll be quiet.”

“No, I’ve overstayed my time.” She waited a moment to finish what she’d been reading, and then she looked up at him Her eyes were blue and alive and they took him prisoner on the spot. “Silas says there’ll be copies ready within another week.”

“Good.” Quait cast about for a way to prolong the interview. But his mind had gone numb.

“Nice to meet you, Quait.” She rose, smiled, and walked off. He watched her stride to the desk, sign out, and leave the library.

“You’ve been keeping something from me, Silas.”

“And what is that?” he asked. They’d met for dinner at the Lost Cause.

“I met Chaka Milana today.” Quait rolled his eyes. “She looks pretty good.”

Silas shook his head. “I don’t think she’s very happy with me right now.”

“Why’s that?”

The waiter brought wine and filled their glasses. “I didn’t take her frontier scout very seriously.”

“Oh.” Quait frowned. “I got the impression the way you described it that you and she had agreed that the evidence was insufficient.”

Silas looked uncomfortable. “Not quite,” he said. “I guess that was my conclusion. She’s determined to pursue this business. It’s like ten years ago all over again. She’s becoming obsessed. She behaves as if it’s just a matter of going out into the woods for a few days. Anyway, she’s been talking to people at the Imperium, and elsewhere, trying to put together an expedition.”

“Is she having any luck?”

“I hope not. Look, Quait, nobody would like to find that place more than I do. Her woodsman found some marks on trees, but they could be anything. What’s going to happen is, she’ll put together a mission, it’ll get a few miles outside the borders, and they’ll run out of signs. Then they’ll come back, and anybody with a professional reputation to lose will very surely lose it. I can’t afford to get mixed up in that.”

“I didn’t say anything,” said Quait.

“Well, you were looking at me as if you disapproved. Even what’s-his-name. Shannon, admitted he couldn’t make any guarantees.”

“Shannon?”

“The woodsy guy.”

Quait nodded. “You won’t get a guarantee, Silas, with a thing like this. Not ever. You know that as well as I do.”

“I know.” A candle burned in a globe on the table. Silas stared at it. “I wasn’t looking for a guarantee, Quait. You know that.”

Quait tried his wine, licked his lips, put it down. “Silas, may I speak frankly?”

“Of course.”

“What is it that frightens you? What is it that keeps you from going after the one thing in this life that has real meaning for you? You backed off nine years ago, and you’re backing off now.”

“And I was right nine years ago, wasn’t I?”

“I don’t know. Were you?”

“Nobody came back. Except Karik.”

Quait shrugged. “Maybe you would have made the difference.” He leaned forward. “Silas, I know you’d risk your reputation if you went. I know the odds for success aren’t good. But I think basing your decision on what someone else will think doesn’t sound like you.”

“Sure it does,” said Silas. “I’ve always been concerned about public opinion. I have to be. My livelihood depends on it.”

“Then maybe you’re right,’ he said. “Maybe, if it’s out there, you’re not the right person to find it. But however that may be, I think you’ve been asking the wrong question. I’m more inclined to wonder what might happen if Shannon is right? If the trail is complete. If Haven really is at the end of it.”

“That’s a lot of if’s.”

“Yes. Well, I think we’ve already agreed about the odds. But anybody can do stuff when the odds are in their favor. Or when there’s no risk. Right?”

Silas liked Bernard Shaw. He spent the evening in the Senate library. He was leafing through Mrs. Warren’s Profession, but it was the conversation with Quait that drove his mood. The illyrians also possessed Man and Superman, Major Barbara, and Too True to Be Good, in addition to a fragment of Saint Joan.

“I’m going after the prize, Silas,” Karik had said. “It’s all out there. Shakespeare and Dante and the Roadmaker histories. And their mathematics and science. It’s waiting for us. But we need you.”

Silas had rejected the offer, had turned away. It was nonsense. He’d so thoroughly convinced himself that now he suspected he wanted it to be nonsense. Does a man clasp old beliefs, and old fears, so desperately?

And it had come again.

A prize so vast that no risk was too great. But this time, there’d be no Karik Endine to plunge into the wilderness. Only a young woman whose passions were running away with her head, and his infatuated former student.

Idly, he turned the pages of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, staring at the script, not really reading. But one line jumped out at him. It was Vivie’s comment to Mrs. Warren, near the end of Act IV: /// had been you, mother, I might have done as you did; but I should not have lived one life and believed in another .

After a while, Silas put the book away.

He walked slowly home, up the curving road, past candlelit cottages and the bakeshop and Cape’s Apothecary. Tomorrow he would send a message to Chaka, and then he would ask the Board of Regents to finance the attempt.

Once it became official that a second expedition would be mounted, Silas became the center of attention at the Imperium. Close friends advised him against the foray; others, not so close, made no real effort to hide their amusement. Nevertheless, all his colleagues, regardless of their views, seemed to feel required to explain publicly why they were unable to join the hunt. After all, the masters were supposed to have invested their lives in the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge. But, as one mathematician pointed out, if his desire for knowledge suggested he should go, wisdom dictated he stay put.

Silas immediately announced his intention to accompany the mission, and argued that it should leave as soon as possible. The lirsi expedition had been gone more than six months, he-said. We know we’ll be heading north, and we wain to be back before winter sets in. Silas put himself at Chaka’s disposal, and they set February 16 as the date for departure.

Silas used his political connections to get Quait assigned as an ad hoc military escort, thereby saving his pay. In addition, he informed Chaka that Quait had been responsible for his change of heart. When she took him aside to thank him, Quait pretended to a degree of humility, but took care not to overdo it.

It appeared for a time there would be only three of them. Or four, if Chaka was right and Shannon eventually joined. That’s okay, Quait insisted. He argued that a smaller group might have a better chance to succeed. “We’ll be more able to function as a single person, and less likely to run into personality differences. And three people aren’t going to make the Tuks nervous.”

Chaka spent much of the time leading up to departure reading every scrap of information she could find relating to Haven and Abraham Polk.

Most of the tales agreed that Polk had been captain of the Quebec, a warship that could sail at high speed against the wind. (Modern authorities thought there might have been a kernel of truth in the legend, that there might have been such a ship, and that it may have been named the Quebec. But no one knew who the name referred to, and of course they dismissed the more fanciful details, e,g., that it had been a submersible.) Folk’s naval efforts, traditionally, had consisted of salvage and rescue.