Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road

“Well,” said Flojian, breaking the agreement. “We’re sorry, too. But there’s not much help for it, is there?”

“Can you see me now?” asked Avila.

“No.”

“But there are places in the building where you have vision?”

“A few. There’s one near the donutshop in the concourse. I see you every time you walk past it.”

What an odd creature this was. “Why have we not been meeting in one of these other places?”

“None has working speakers.”

“Avila,” whispered Quait. His eyes said get to the point.

She nodded. “Mike, do you want us to try again?”

Boards creeked underfoot. Quait said, “But we’d like not to get blown up.”

“No. Of course not. But you’re into Operations. Just be careful going through doors.” He paused. “And, yes. Please. I want you to do this if you ‘re still willing.”

“You’re sure,” said Quait. “You seem kind of tentative.”

“I’ve never walked these corridors, Quait,” Mike said. “I’m programed to coordinate train schedules and maintain personnel flies. Not to assist a breakin. I’m doing the best I can.”

“So far,” said Flojian, “your best hasn’t been very good.”

“I know. Listen, I have a gift for you. Some small compensation for what you’ve lost. What sort of weapons do you have?”

“Rifles and pistols. Why?”

” What kind of ammunition do they use?”

“Bullets.” Quait frowned. “What other kind is there?”

“Okay. Look for a door marked ‘SECURITY.’ There’ll be an outer office and an inner locked room. The inner room has hand weapons,

designed for crowd control. They are palm-sized, wedge-shaped. Most of them are still in the original containers, and will have to be charged. I’ll explain how to do that.”

“Why do I want them?” asked Quait.

“You may find them more effective than what you have. With these, you don’t have to hit somebody with a missile. Just point it in their general direction and squeeze.” He repeated that they would need to be charged, and described how to do it. “Okay,” Avila said. “We’ll take a look.”

“And be careful about closed doors. Right? No open flames. And you might not even be able to breathe in a room that’s been sealed. So let it air out.”

“Too bad Jon didn’t have the benefit of the advice,” said Flojian.

Avila threw an angry glance at him. “Okay, Mike,” she said. “Anything else?”

“When you get away from the City, be careful. There’ve been lights on the lake. I don’t know what they are. And if your gods do exist they’ll count this night in your favor.”

The air in the computer room was stale, but safe. A cracked pipe and crumbled insulation had ensured that. But Avila had no way of knowing, and so she and Flojian had waited a half-hour before using a board to push a lamp into harm’s way. When it did not explode, she went cautiously inside. Flojian followed with the axe

There were several gray boxes in the room. She found the one marked MICA/SR. It was made of pseudo-metal and, like the table on which it stood, looked almost new. There was some discoloration, but that was all. The box was connected by cable to several other devices of similar, but not identical, configuration.

It was making a noise. A low but deep-throated hum.

The push button marked POWER was on the right side. On the left, the letters IBM were prominently displayed, centered among other buttons and inserts, marked TURBO, CAPA, and INT. Avila put her hand, palm flat, on top of the casing. It had a rough texture, and she could feel a slight vibration.

She thought about making some final statement to the

i entity. A farewell. A warning. A last chance to change its

mind. But she suspected it was waiting in an agony of anticipation (as she believed she would have been), and any delay now would be cruel. So she pushed the button and the vibration stopped.

There was a seam around the front of the case. She inserted the axe blade and used it to try to force the box open. But she wasn’t doing well, and Flojian reached out for the instrument. ‘Before you take off your arm,” he said. He produced a chisel and needed only a moment to remove the lid. Beneath lay the white metal casing. She inserted her fingers beneath its lip and pulled. It clicked and the top lifted, exposing the black disk. She looked at it in the lamplight and then lifted it out. “Done,” said Flojian. She wrapped it in a piece of cloth. A few minutes later they broke into the security locker and found two dozen of the crowd-control weapons Mike had desscribed. They were small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, and they looked a little like black seashells. “Not going to scare anyone,” Flojian said. She took six. On the theory that you can’t have too much Firepower, she’d have taken them all, but they required fifteen minutes each in the unit that Mark had called a charger. When she was finished, she gave half to Flojian and pocketed the rest. Then she went back to the second floor room and called Mike’s name. There was no answer.

They stayed that night in the gray tower. Next day, with the horses in tow, they climbed to the fourth floor, picked up Shay’s signs, and followed them onto a kind of skyway, navigating rooftops, traveling long ill-lit corridors, and crossing overpasses. By sundown they’d descended again to ground level and reached open water. Here, in the shade of a stand of elm trees, they gave Jon Shannon to the flames. And for the first time, they felt lost in the immensity of the Wilderness.

When the ceremony had concluded, Avila weighted the piece of cloth that held the black disk, waded far out into the water, and flung it away.

She looked out at the blue horizon.”Goodbye, Mike,” she said. “Ekra convey you in peace to your eternal home.”

The loss of Jon Shannon hit Chaka even harder than Silas’s death had. She had known him when she was a child, and she’d been responsible for bringing him into the effort, but those weren’t the reasons. Rather, there’d been a sense of indestructibility about the man, as if he could not be brought down, as if any enterprise on which he was embarked could not come to a bad end. Now he was gone and his companions were shaken.

Once again, they began to talk about giving it up. But now there were two dead. How did you go back with two dead and explain that you had accomplished nothing?

“That’s true enough,” said Quait. “But we have two women along, and I think our first obligation is to protect them. I vote we turnaround.”

“Forget it,” Chaka said. “If you want to take care of your own hide, say so. But don’t make decisions on my account.”

“Nor mine,” said Avila. She growled her response because she’d been offended, although she too believed that the cost of the mission had now gone too high.

Quait went into a sulk, as if his manhood had been questioned. “Okay,” he said finally. “If you’re willing to go on, then let’s do it. I was only trying to do the right thing.”

And Flojian, who believed he was already fighting a reputation for faintheartedness, took the moral high ground, and insisted that they really had no choice but to go on.

So the decision was made to continue, despite the fact that any one of them, left alone to choose, would have opted to turnback.

By the end of the third day, the towers of the city by the sea were just visible in the light of the setting sun. The companions were moving along the south shore, past heavy dunes. It was country they recognized, country they’d seen from the maglev. Inland, the forest still battled extensive ruins, many of which were charred. Like Memphis. And the city in the swamp. During the final days of the Roadmakers, Alvila suspected, fire had been the last resort against the plague.