Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road

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 That Karik had been withdrawn, uncommunicative, almost sullen.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.”

“I’d be grateful,” said Flojian. “You were very close to him at one time. Besides,” he hesitated, “there is no one else. I mean, you know how it’s been.”

Silas nodded. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll be honored.”

Silas and Karik and their intimates had spent countless pleasant evenings at the villa, by the fireplace, or on the benches out under the elms, watching the light fade from the sky, speculating about artifacts and lost races and what really lay beneath the soil. It had been an exciting time to be alive: The League was forming, intercity wars were ending, there was talk of actively excavating the colossal Roadmaker ruins at the mouth of the Mississippi. There were even proposals for more money for the Imperium, and a higher emphasis on scholarship and research. It had seemed possible then that they might finally begin to make some progress toward uncovering the secrets of the Roadmakers. At least, perhaps, they might find out how the various engines worked, what fueled their civilization. Of all the artifacts, nothing was more enigmatic than the hojjies. Named for Algo Hoj, who spent a lifetime trying to understand how they worked, the hojjies were vehicles. They were scattered everywhere on the highways. Their interiors were scorched, but their pseudo-metal bodies could still be made to shine if one wanted to work at it. (It was Hoj who concluded that the charred interiors had resulted from long summers of brutal heat before the very tough windows had finally blown out.) But what had powered them?

So there had been ground for optimism twenty years ago. The League had formed, and peace had come. But wreckage in the Mississippi had discouraged operations in the delta; funds lor the Imperium had never materialized; and the hojjies remained as enigmatic as ever.

They stood at the front door while Silas took in the river and the ruins. “He loved this view,” said Silas. It was his window into the past.” The hillside sloped gently down to the water’s edge, about a hundred feet away. A pebble walkway circled the house, looped past a series of stone benches, and descended to the narrow strip of beach fronting the river. A tablet lay on one of the benches.

Flojian shook his hand. “Thanks for your help, Silas.”

Silas looked at the tablet. A cold wind moved in the trees.

Flojian followed his gaze. ‘That’s odd,” he said. He strolled to the bench, almost too casually, regarded the tablet as if it were an animal that might bite, and picked it up. It was drenched from the rain, but the leather cover had protected it. “My father was working on a commentary to The Travels.”

Silas opened the tablet and looked at Karik’s neat, precise handwriting. It was dated that day.

Unfortunately, only a fragment of The Travels was then known to exist. There is, in the prologue, a celebrated conversation between Abraham Polk and Simba Markus, the woman who would eventually betray him, over the value of securing the history of a vanished world. “It’s only the dead past,” Simba says. “Let it go.”

“The past,” Polk replies, “is never dead. It is who we are.”

“But the risk is too great. We might bring the Plague back with us. Have you thought of that?”

“I’ve thought of it. But for this kind of prize, any risk is justified.”

Apparently in reference to this exchange, Karik had written: “No, it is not.”

“Odd to leave it outside like that,” said Silas. “Maybe he wasn’t feeling well.” He looked from the bench to the top of the ridge, where Karik customarily walked, to the strip of beach. “He set it on the bench and did what? Walked up onto the ridge?”

“I assume that’s what happened.”

“And he was wearing boots, wasn’t he? The first thing the boys saw was a boot.”

“Yes.”

“There are bootmarks here.” They were faint, barely discernible after the rain. But they were there. Immediately adjacent to the bench, the marks crossed several feet of beach, and disappeared into the water.

Kon had provided Silas with another gift: an unquenchable desire to know about the Roadmakers, whose highways ran to infinity. Now they were frequently covered with earth, mere passages through the forests, on which trees did not grow. An observer standing on the low hills that rimmed the Mississippi could see the path of the great east-west road, two strips really, twin tracks rising and falling, sometimes in unison, sometimes not, coming like arrows out of the sunrise, dividing when they reached Illyria, circling the city and rejoining at Holly’s Bridge to cross the river.

Kon had suggested an intriguing possibility to Silas: The great structures were more than simply roads, they were simultaneously religious artifacts. Several studies had found geometrical implications that tied them to the cosmic harmonies. Silas never understood any of it and exercised the principle of skepticism that Kon himself had encouraged.

If the ruins were simply part of the landscape to Rinny and Colin, no more exceptional than honey locusts and red oaks, they meant a great deal more to Silas. They were a touchstone to another world. It was painful to be in the presence of so great a civilization and to know so little about it.

Silas Glote had found his life’s work investigating the Roadmakers. And if it didn’t pay well, it supplied endless satisfaction. There was nothing quite like introducing students to the mysteries of the ruins, whose peculiarities they had seen but rarely noticed: the shafts, for example, that existed to no apparent purpose in most of the taller buildings; the ubiquitous metallic boxes and pseudo-glass screens; the massive gray disk mounted near a sign that read Memphis Light, Gas, and Water, pointed at the sky; the occasional music that could be heard at night from within a mound on the west side of the old city. Silas’s sense of guilt over staying away from Karik’s expedition might have arisen not only from his failure to support his old friend, but also from his mixed feelings regarding the out-come of the mission. In a dark part of his soul, he had taken satisfaction in Karik’s failure. He didn’t like to admit that fact to himself, but it was nonetheless true.