Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road

“When she announced that she was Doctor Milana and that thing took her seriously,” said Flojian, “I was barely able to keep a straight face.” He went on to draw the lesson: “The intelligences that haunt the Roadmaker ruins aren’t really very bright. If there are any more incidents, we need to keep our heads.”

Chaka noticed that Quait grew increasingly quiet during the latter part of the evening, and seemed almost distracted when Avila announced that she was going to call it a night.

“Before you do,” said Quait, “I have something to say.” His voice was off-tone. Jittery.

The firelight created an aura around him. He looked at Chaka for a long moment, and tugged at the drawstrings of his shirt. “I wouldn’t want to be like the trooper in the song and miss my chance. I wouldn’t want to ride away one day and leave you—” he was still watching her, his gray eyes very round and very intense,”—leave you waving good-bye.”

A stillness came over the moment. Light and shadow drifted around the crumbling walls. Chaka discovered she was barely breathing.

“I would be very happy if, when we return to Illyria, you would marry me.”

The stiffness melted out of his expression and she read a new message: There, I’ve said it and nothing can make me take it back.

Rain was falling steadily, beating on the roof, pouring through here and there into the old building. “This is a surprise, Quait,” she said, stalling for time to collect her thoughts. She flicked back to Illyria and brought up an image of Raney, but he wouldn’t come clear.

She took his hand and squeezed it. “I think so. Yes. I would like very much to marry you, Quait.”

Five days after Ann Arbor, they arrived at another city, vast and empty, and stood on the west bank of a major river. Shay’s track turned north into the ruins. They followed it along the waterfront, past gray quays and ancient pilings and collapsed warehouses and moldering wharves and stranded ships. The ships were all on the bottom, decks and spars usually above water. Some were behemoths, corroded vessels of such incredible dimensions that they explained the giant anchor on River Road. By midafternoon they were passing the remnants of a collapsed bridge. A second bridge, farther north, had once connected the west bank with an island. It was also down.

Flojian watched seabirds drift across the surface. “Current’s not bad,” he said.

As if Karik had reacted to the sight of the second damaged bridge, the trail turned away from the river, back into the city. They made camp on the shore that night and, fortified by a trout breakfast, worked their way in the morning past mountains of concrete and iron rubble. As had happened in Chicago, some of the larger buildings had collapsed. To the northwest, a bowl-shaped structure stood serenely intact amid an ocean of debris. The forest was coming back, and patches of black walnut and cottonwood now grew on the bones of these ancient monsters.

They came out on the shore of a long, narrow lake that had formed among the artificial hills. Trees crowded down to the bank. The water was quiet, and they stopped to enjoy the sylvan atmosphere, isolated among so much wreckage.

Ducks drifted on the placid surface, and turtles paddled through the depths. A gray stone slab rose out of the water at the eastern end. Carved letters announced DETROIT-WINDSOR TUNNEL. It was odd, because no tunnel was in evidence.

The trail led back out to the river, where it stopped. Two pairs of Shay’s markers turned vertical. “They crossed here,” said Quait.

The other side looked far away. Flojian gazed around at the trees. Some had been cut. “I think I prefer this to dangling in the air anyhow.”

“I’ve never built a raft,” said Chaka. “Do we know how to do this?”

Flojian feigned shock. “Do we know how to do this? Do you know how to make a bracelet? This is the way I earn my living.” He smiled in a lopsided, owlish way. “Well, it was the way I started.”

By nightfall they’d taken down eight trees. That wasn’t bad for half a day’s work by a businessman, a militiaman, and a former priest. (Chaka, who was deemed the least physical of the four, was sent fishing for dinner. She returned with more trout.)

Her relationship with Quait had changed in several subtle ways since the marriage proposal. Curiously, the distance between them seemed to have increased. If their attitude toward each other had not become more formal, it had at least become more circumspect. There was less furtive handholding, and almost no stolen kisses. This might have resulted from a combination of Quait’s awareness of the chemical relations among the four companions and a reluctance to disturb them, as a formal pairing off would have done; and from Chaka’s reflexive tendency to assert her independence.

Chaka also discovered that the sexual tension had eased. Quait had engaged her interest during the first days of the quest. That interest had evolved gradually, or maybe not so gradually, into friendship and then passion. Consequently, she knew she had begun to put on a show for him, softening her voice when she spoke to him, lingering a little too long against a setting sun, letting her eyes speak for her. It would not have been correct to say she no longer felt a need to do any of that, but the pressure was gone, and she was now enjoying him more.

She’d been curious why he had proposed to her in front of the others. “Were you so certain?” she asked.

“Public commitment,” he said. “These are peculiar circumstances, and I didn’t want you to think I was trying to take advantage of them. I wanted you to know I was serious.”

Quait had the first watch. She lay half asleep, listening to the crackling logs and the murmur of the river. He was walking around back by the horses.

He was fairly tall, although he’d always seemed short, standing beside Jon Shannon. Even Avila was an inch taller, but Avila was a six-footer. He had wide shoulders and he moved with easy grace. He was handsome, although not in the classic mode of the long, lean jaw and the straight nose and whatnot. Quait had features that would have drawn no second look from most women except that they were illuminated by the force of his personality. His good humor, the pleasure he took in being with her, his intelligence, all combined to animate his smile in the most extraordinary way. She had known better-looking men. But none more attractive.

They needed two days to complete the raft. Flojian directed the operation, carved and installed a rudder, and set up rigging. He converted blankets into sails and showed Avila how to make paddles. They were delayed an additional day when, as they were about to start across, the wind turned around and blew out of the east.

On the morning of April 19, the river was calm and they prepared again to set off. Baggage and saddles were loaded onto the raft. The horses, of course, would swim. Long individual lines were looped around their necks in loose bowlines, so that if one was swept away or went down, it would not drag the others with it.

“I still don’t know,” Avila said, looking across at the opposite shore. “It’s a long way.”

“Horses are good swimmers,” said Quait. “They can keep going for an hour or so. That should be plenty of time.”

Their lead horse was an animal named Bali, a large roan stallion. They coaxed him into the water. He was less than anxious, but once in he seemed okay. The others followed (there were now thirteen altogether), and they launched the raft, which someone had christened Reluctant.

The wind filled the sails and the raft slipped out into the current. Almost immediately they saw they were clearing shore too quickly and would drag the horses. Quait and Avila jammed paddles into the water to try to break forward momentum while Flojian trimmed the sails. The Reluctant gave way and the animals began to draw closer.