Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road

The trail, stymied by the obstacle, turned north, moving parallel to the ditch. The trees closed in again. The ditch went on and on, and at sunset there was still no end to it. But there was something else: An iron ship of Roadmaker proportions had come to rest against the far wall.

“That thing is a canal,” said Flojian, staggered. “Or it was.”

“It’s the sketch,” said Chaka, excited. She pulled out her packet, went through them, and produced the one titled The Ship. “I never thought it was that big,” she said.

It was an appropriate vessel for so gargantuan an engineering project. It was probably six hundred feet from bow to stem. It had been coming south when it was abandoned, or ran aground, or whatever. The hull was rusted black. Masts and posts and derricks were snapped and broken; they jabbed into the wall and the woods along the rim.

“How on earth,” asked Chaka, “do you move something like that? I wouldn’t think sails would be adequate. And it doesn’t look as if there’s much provision for sails anyway.”

Quait shook his head. Banks of oarsmen damned well wouldn’t do the job either. Sometimes he thought the laws of physics didn’t apply to Roadmaker technology.

“The same way,” said Flojian, “that you lift a maglev, I imagine.”

It was left to Flojian to point out the bad news: The Ship was dated May 13. The last sketch in the series, Haven, was dated July 25. “When they arrived here,” he said, “they were still ten weeks away.”

They made camp. That night, despite the fact it was a warm evening, they built the fire a little higher than usual.

In the morning, they continued north along the rim without seeing any more grounded ships. At midafternoon they topped a rise and came out of the trees. Glades and fields and patches of forest ran down to a placid blue sea. The ditch was blocked off by a wall. Beyond the wall, it divided into twin channels, which descended in a series of steps until they opened into the sea.

“Incredible,” said Flojian. “They walked the ships down.”

The wall, on closer inspection, turned out to be a pair of gates, topped by a catwalk. It was a place to cross.

The river roared past. They gazed at the torrent and, following the faithful Shay, turned upstream.

The fury of the watercourse filled the afternoon, throwing up a mist that soaked people and animals. It had carved out a gorge and became, as they proceeded south, still more violent. Toward sunset, a remnant of sidewalk appeared along the lip of the gorge and a sound like thunder rolled downriver. The walls of the gorge grew steeper, and the sidewalk skirted its edge for about a mile before taking them past a collection of ruined buildings.

It also took them to the source of the thunder. A little more than a mile ahead, a great white curtain of mist partially obscured, but could not hide, a waterfall of spectacular dimensions. The river, tens of thousands of tons of it, roared over a V-shaped precipice.

They knew it at once. The sixth sketch. Nyagra.

The walkway curved off toward the ruins. They left it, and continued along the edge of the gorge, ascending gradually to the summit of the falls. Spray and mist filled the air, and soon they were drenched. But the majesty of the falling water overwhelmed trivial concerns; here all complaints seemed innocuous, and they looked down from the heights laughing and exhilarated. It was still early afternoon, but they decided they deserved a holiday, and so they took it. They withdrew far enough to find dry shelter while retaining a view of the spectacle, and pitched camp.

“Incredible,” Quait said. “How would you describe this to people?”

Flojian nodded. “Carved by the hand of the Goddess. What a beautiful place.” He was looking down toward the distant gorge and the ruined buildings below the falls. “That’s strange,” he said.

“What is?” asked Chaka.

“That must have been an observation complex. But why’s it so far away? They could have put it a lot closer, and provided a magnificent view.” Indeed, beyond the point where the ruins lay, only hedge and shrubbery lined the river. There had been more than enough room.

“Don’t know,” she said.

Flojian wondered if someone had owned the land and had simply refused permission.

It occurred to no one that the waterfall was on the move. It was wearing away its rock carapace at about three feet per year, and since the days of the Roadmakers, it had retreated the better part of a mile.

The falls threw up a lot of mist, and in fact considerably more than it would have when the observation platform was in regular use. The central sections of the horseshoe came under most pressure, and therefore were giving way more quickly than the wings of the cataract, elongating the area in which the falling streams were in violent competition. The absolute clarity of the American falls, and the misty coyness of the Canadian, no longer existed. The spectacle was almost lost in its own shrouds.

The sky was full of stars that evening, and there was a bright moon. While Flojian slept, Quait and Chaka approached the cataract and looked down into the basin. Mist and moonlight swirled, and Quait had a sense of shifting realities.

Chaka looked particularly lovely against that silvery backdrop. “If I were going to move into the woods, like Jon,” she said, “I’d want to live here.”

The mist felt cool on their faces. “It’s the most spectacular place I’ve ever seen,” said Quait. A brisk wind blew downriver. His arm was around her, and she moved closer.

Chaka was by no means the first woman to stir his emotions profoundly. But there was something about her, and the stars, and the waterfall, that lent a sense of permanence to the embrace. There would never be a time when he would be unable to call up the sound and sights of this night. “It’s a moment we’ll have forever,” he told her.

Her cheek lay against his, and she was warm and yielding in his arms. “It is very nice here,” she said.

“It means you’ll never be able to get rid of me. No matter what.”

She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes dark and unreadable. Then she stood on her toes and brushed her lips against his. It was less a kiss than an invitation.

She was wearing a woolen shirt under her buckskin jacket. He released the snaps on the jacket, opened it and pulled her dose. “I love you too, Chaka,” he said.

She murmured something he could not hear and inserted her body against his, fitting part to part. “And I love you, _ Quait.”

He set aside his stern moral background; he was deliriously conscious of her breathing and her lips, her throat and eyes, and the willingness with which she leaned into him. He caressed the nape of her neck.

She pulled his face close and kissed him very hard. Quait touched her breast and felt the nipple already erect beneath the linen. They stood together for some minutes, enjoying each other. But Quait was careful to go no farther. Although he ached to take her, the penalties for surrendering virtue were high. Not least among them were the consequences of a pregnancy on the trail, far from home.

But our night will come.

South of the falls, the Nyagra divided into two channels, creating an island about five miles long. The companions crossed the western channel on a wobbly plank bridge of uncertain, but relatively recent, origin. Although it was now in a state of general disrepair and could in no way match Roadmaker engineering, the bridge was nevertheless no mean feat of its own, spanning a half-mile of rapids.

“Sometimes,” Flojian said, “I think we tend to underestimate everyone who followed the Roadmakers. We behave as if nothing substantive happened after they died off.”