Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road

“What was in them? The rooms?”

“Just books. And some Roadmaker junk. Lot of those gray boxes you find everywhere.”

“Books?” She came alive. “Where are they now?”

“Where are what?”

“The books. The other stuff.”

“Still there, I suppose.”

“You left it?” Chaka couldn’t believe her good fortune.

He shrugged. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t we? They wouldn’t have been worth anything to anybody. They were in pretty bad shape.”

“Why?”

“It was damp down there. Wet. Everything was soaked.”

Chaka squeezed her cup until Knobby gently disengaged her hand. “Easy,” he said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“You said before the books were okay,” said Chaka.

“I said the books on the staircase were okay.”

“All right. Thanks, Knobby.” She passed him a gold coin. “We’re going to lease a boat and go bade up there.”

He was careful to keep the coin concealed as he slipped it into his pocket. “I don’t think you’ll be able to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Nobody’ll go. The place is haunted and everybody knows it.”

“Okay. But if I’m able to get a boat, would you show us where this door in the cliff is?”

“I already told you, I won’t go near it.”

“There are two more of those,” she said, looking at his pocket.

“Doesn’t matter. Listen, in case you think I’m just a damned fool, a storm blew up on the way back and we nearly got wrecked. Any kind of bad luck on open water and these boats go down like rocks. Add the currents. And whatever lives in that cliff up there.” He took a long pull of the wine. “Tell you what I will do: I’ll make you a map. Take you right to it.” He nodded. “But I won’t go back. And you might think it over, too, even if you are able to get somebody crazy enough to take you.”

Knobby was right. Of the half-dozen captains they were able to locate, only one showed any interest in making the voyage north. This was the commander of the Irika, a listing, battered, foul-smelling cattle hauler. The description, Chaka thought, also fit the captain, an overbearing female with red-lit eyes and crooked teeth. But Quait surprised her by breaking off negotiations after an amicable price had been reached. “That one smelled gold,” he explained later. “She’d have hit us all on the head, taken her fee plus whatever else she could find, and dropped us overboard.”

But they were weary of land travel. If Knobby’s map was accurate, they were still over five hundred miles from their destination. Straight line. Thirty days travel at a minimum. Possibly with the requirement to build another boat at the end of it.

“I’m almost tempted to try our luck with the Irika,” said Flojian. “If they were to prove untrustworthy, we could disarm them easily enough. In fact, it would give us an excuse to seize the boat.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Chaka with sarcasm. “Then we can take it up the coast. Do we even know how to turn on the engine?”

“Yes,” said Flojian. “Actually, I think we do.”

“It’s too complicated,” said Quait. “They will try to jump us. We’d have to keep watch over half a dozen people for a couple of weeks. We need a better idea.”

“I might have one,” said Chaka. “There’s a town about thirty miles northeast. Bennington. I think we should ride out that way.”

“To what purpose?” asked Flojian. “It’s where Orin Claver lives.”

“Claver?” Quait needed a moment to recall where he’d heard the name. “The inventor of the steam engine.” Flojian smiled uneasily. “The rider in the balloon.”

Like Oriskany, Bennington consisted of a cluster of farms surrounding a fortified manor house. But Bennington was not on the frontier, and the continuing battles being waged against marauders by the Judge were a very occasional thing here. Visitors could feel the sense of tranquility that overlay the countryside. There was no sign of patrols along the approach roads, and children played unsupervised in the fields. Pennants fluttered from the stockade walls, and the gates were unguarded. This was open country, about equally divided between forest and cultivated plots.

Claver lived in a cottage on the main road about an hour east of the manor house. “It’s easy to find,” a cart driver told them. “Just look for the obelisk. You can’t miss it.”

It would indeed have been difficult. The obelisk was visible for miles. It soared into the bright afternoon sky, by far the highest structure in Brocket! and its attendant territories. A town had once lived on this site, but it lay buried now beneath low rolling hills, its presence marked only by the monument. There was a plate, carefully preserved, before which they lingered:

WE’LL SEE WHO’S COIN’ T OWN THIS FARM.

Claver’s cottage was one of several occupying nearby hilltops. But his was easy to identify: The fields surrounding it were unworked, and in its rear a wooden frame rose higher than the trees. An enormous bag had been draped across the frame. It was the balloon.

There were several sheds, a barn, and a silo. They dismounted, knocked on the front door, and, receiving no answer, walked around back. The sheds were filled with engines and vats and tubs. Every building had a workbench.

and the floors were often covered with shavings, the walls discolored with gray-brown splotches. At one wooden table, a row of beakers held liquids of various colors.

They paused before a wicker basket strung with cables. “I think that’s what you ride in,” said Chaka. Flojian inspected it with obvious reluctance. An orange-colored shed was filled with a stench that was still in their nostrils twenty minutes later when an elderly man, covered with sweat, burst out of the woods, “Hello,” he said, waving and barely pausing before disappearing into the barn. They followed him.

“Warm day.” He mopped his brow with a towel. He was wiry and muscular, with long silver hair kept in check by a headband. “You come to see me?”

He was not the frowning, academic type Quait had expected. But there was something vaguely unkempt about the man’s expression, a kind of easy smile operating at cross purposes with intense green eyes. “Are you Orin Claver?”

“I am. And who are you?”

Quait did the introductions. Claver peered at them closely. It was apparent he didn’t see well. “You talk funny,” he said. “Where are you from?”

“The Mississippi Valley.”

“You’ve come a long way.” The remark was a surprise. Quait had expected the usual shrug. “Surely you haven’t traveled all this distance just to see me.”

“We understand you take people for rides.”

“In the balloon? Yes, I do. Where did you want to go?” He kicked off his shoes and was peeling his garments without apparent regard to social niceties.

“We have a map.” Quait showed him.

Claver threw a quick glance in its direction, nodded as if he’d taken everything in, and flexed his forearms. “Hard to believe I’m eighty-seven, isn’t it?” He grinned. “Well, let’s go inside.”

He was down to a pair of white shorts. They paraded across a spotty grass lawn into the cottage. A bag of walnuts hung just inside the front door. He offered them around. “Good for your digestion,” he said.

Chaka accepted a couple. Claver took one for himself and tossed two more onto the grass. Within seconds a pair of squirrels appeared and seized them.

The interior was bright and comfortable, furnished with hickory furniture and off-white muslin curtains. Claver asked what kind of wine they liked, removed a couple of bottles from a cabinet, and filled three glasses. “There’s cold water in the kitchen if you’d like some,” he said. He indicated a short hallway. “Through there. Make yourselves at home. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”