Eternity Road (32 page)

The sun climbed toward the meridian. The first sign of Knobby’s bay would be land to the east. But islands were liberally sprinkled through the area, so there was a series of false alarms. At midafternoon, the wind changed. Claver threw more ballast over the side. The vehicle moved first one way and then another before settling back on course.

“That’s about it,” he announced. “We don’t have enough left to manage anything other than a landing. Your bay better come up soon.”

Within the hour, a finger of land appeared in the east. They watched with hopeful skepticism, remembering the earlier islands. It developed into a long coastline, and cut off the open sea. Mountains rose. And, as they drew closer, they saw more Roadmaker towns and coastal roads littered with hojjies.

“This is it,” said Chaka.

They came in over the bay at an altitude of about two miles. The tide was out, and they saw with joy that it did indeed leave vast mudflats in some areas. It wouldn’t be difficult for an unwary master to find himself stranded.

A few minutes later, the bay divided into two channels. “Keep to starboard,” said Flojian, barely able to contain his excitement.

The water glittered in the sunlight. Escarpments and green hills lined the shore. Here, waves rolled onto white beaches; there, they pounded rock formations.

A crosswind caught them and blew them toward the wrong side of the bay. Claver reluctantly released more hydrogen until he had arrested the movement and they were again approaching the eastern coast. But they continued to drop, even after he’d thrown out ballast. “We’re going to have to find a place to land,” he said.

“Over there!” said Flojian. Inshore, the saddle-shaped mountain came into view.

“Okay,” said Quait. “We’re doing fine.”

“Not really,” said Claver. “We’re going down a little bit fast.” He dumped the last of his sand. They continued to fall.

“Orin?” said Quait.

“Prepare for landing,” he said. “We need a city.”

The bay was getting narrow. A long hooked cape, very much resembling the one marked on Knobby’s map, projected out from the east. Knobby had given them bearings, and they used them now to target an escarpment.
A sheer wall
, their map said.

“That’s it,” cried Chaka, and they embraced all around.

They drifted past. “We’re doing about forty,” said Claver.

The bay continued to squeeze down. The mountaintops were getting close.

“Town ahead,” said Claver.

Quait could now see clearly a network of ancient roads and piers and stone walls. The precipice that might contain Haven fell behind.

The town was reasonably intact. Blackened buildings still stood. The network of streets was easy to make out, and there was a large industrial complex on the north. “Looks like an old power plant,” said Claver. “Probably shut down before the collapse. If we can make it, we’ll be in good shape.”

Bluffs and trees were coming up fast. “Try to relax when we hit,” he added.

A road appeared beneath them, and swerved off to the east. They scraped the top of a hill and bounced through some treetops. As they broke free, Claver jerked away the rip-panel and the envelope collapsed with a sigh. The gondola landed hard and spilled its passengers into a field.

“We’re down,” said Claver.

“Orin,” said Quait, “flying is never going to catch on.”

They dragged the envelope and the gondola into a shed, collected
their weapons, blankets, lamps, the rope ladder, and the rest of their supplies, and turned back toward the bay.

There was no sign of local inhabitants, no houses, no plowed fields. They found a road and followed it into the woods. Nobody talked much. They could hear the sound of the surf in the distance.

The road eventually faded out. But they could smell the water, and an hour later, as the sun went down, they broke out onto the shoreline.

They had fish for dinner and sat late into the night, listening to the long silences. Flojian was appalled to learn that Claver had sold individual steam engines rather than the
process
to marine manufacturers. In a society without patent laws, this had amounted to giving away the secret for the price of a few units. The buyers were now in the business of making their own, and he was effectively cut out. “It doesn’t really matter,” Claver said. “I have all the money I need. What disturbs me is that they overpriced the boats and people blame me. The rivermen think I got rich on their backs.”

“When in fact,” said Flojian, “the manufacturers took the money.” He shook his head. “You need a business manager.”

Claver confessed that he was getting excited about what they might find tomorrow. “I’ve been trying to dismiss it as nonsense, and I still think it is. But wouldn’t it be glorious to find the
Quebec
? What a cap that would be for my career.”

Quait and Chaka took a walk in the woods. “Last night of the great hunt,” she said. “It’s hard to believe we’re really here.”

Moonlight filtered through the trees. It cast an aura around her hair but left her eyes in shadow. She was achingly lovely, a forest goddess who had finally revealed herself. Quait felt nineteen. “I have a suggestion,” he said. His voice was pitched a trifle higher than normal. He’d been practicing all evening how he was going to say this, what words he would use, where he would pause, and where lay stress. But it all vanished. “There’s a tradition,” he continued, “that a ship’s captain is authorized to perform weddings.” He felt her stiffen, and then melt into him. “I’ve talked to Orin. He’d be willing to do it for us. And I think this would be the perfect time.”

“Because the quest ends tomorrow?”

“Because we’re here tonight. Because I’m in love with you.”
Because six people died in those tunnels and nobody knows how
.

“Yes,” she said.

He had not expected so quick a reply. He’d rehearsed various arguments, how they would remember forever the night and the following day, Haven and their wedding, inextricably linked forever. How, regardless of the way things turned out, the journey home would be difficult and dangerous. (He hadn’t been able to work out why the wedding would make it less difficult or less dangerous, but it would sure as hell make it more endurable.) How there was no need to wait longer. Been through enough. They knew now beyond doubt that they would eventually be mates. That decision having been taken, why delay things indefinitely?

She drew his lips down to hers and folded her body into his. “Yes,” she said again.

Orin Claver was not a believer. Nevertheless, he surprised the Illyrians by showing no reluctance to invoke the Goddess as protector of the hearth.

“We are met on this hilltop,” he began, in the timeless ritual of the ancient ceremony, “to join this man and this woman.” The fire crackled in the background, and a rising wind moved the trees. As there was no one present to give the bride away, Flojian agreed to substitute for the requisite family member.

Claver’s white scarf served as Chaka’s veil. She was otherwise in buckskin. Quait found a neckerchief to add a touch of formality to his own attire.

Illyrian weddings required two witnesses, one each from the earthly and from the divine order. Flojian consequently was drawn to double duty, and stood with the invisible Shanta while his two friends pledged love, mutual faith, and fortune. When they’d finished, they exchanged rings which she had woven from vines and set with stones. Claver challenged any who had reason to object to come forward, “or forever remain silent.”

They glanced around at the dark woods, and Chaka’s eyes shone. “No objection having been raised,” said Claver, “I hereby exercise the authority held by captains from time immemorial and declare you husband and wife. Quait, you may kiss the bride.”

Flojian, sensing that the Goddess was preparing to depart, took advantage of her proximity to ask her to remember her servant Avila.

…A sheer wall rising about two hundred feet out of the water. We could see thick woods at the top…. There was a river on the north side of the bluff, and a pebbled beach….

They looked at their map some more, took bearings on the turn in the channel and the saddle-shaped formation that Knobby had described.

“I’d say that’s it,” said Claver.

They compared it with Arin’s sketch. “He would have been back that way,” suggested Chaka. A quarter-mile or so down the beach.

They stood on wet sand off to one side of the formation. “There’s the discolored rock,” Quait said, drawing a horizontal line in the air with his index finger. “The door.”

They all saw it. Flojian noted the position of a notched boulder on the summit. Chaka produced Silas’s journal and made the appropriate notation: SUSPECTED ENTRANCE FOUND. She dated and initialed it. When she’d finished, they hiked around behind the bluff and started upslope.

By early afternoon they’d arrived at the top. They laid out their gear under a spruce tree and peered over the edge. It was a long way down. The cliff face looked gray and hard and very smooth, save for occasional shrubs. Far below, whitecaps washed over rocks. Flojian looked for his notched boulder, walked a few paces along the summit, and stopped. “Right about here,” he said.

Gulls fluttered on air currents and skimmed the outgoing tide.

Quait nodded. “I’ll go down.” He was already reaching for a line.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Claver.

“Why not?”

He glanced at his own eighty-seven-year-old body, at the diminutive Flojian, at Chaka. “I know I’m in good shape for my age,” he said, “but I’m still not sure the three of us could haul you back up here if you got in trouble. Seems to me as if the muscle in this operation should be on top and not on bottom.”

There was no arguing the logic. “Who then?”

“Me,” said Chaka.

“No,” said Quait.

Claver nodded. “It makes sense. She’s forty pounds lighter than anybody else.”

Chaka looped a rope around her shoulders. “It’s not a problem,” she said.

“Absolutely not,” said Quait.

But Chaka never paused. “I’m a full member of this mission,” she said. “I’ve taken my chances along with everybody else.”

“I know that.”

“Good.” She tightened the rope and stretched her shoulders.

“Have you ever done anything like this before?” Quait asked.

“Tree house.” And, when his expression did not lighten, “I’ll be fine, Quait.”

“We should have thought to bring a harness,” said Claver.

They secured the rope ladder to a cottonwood and dropped it over the side. Then they looped Chaka’s safety line around the same tree, left sixty feet of slack, and anchored it to an elm. “Be careful,” said Quait. “If you need more line, pull once. You want to get hauled out of there, pull twice.”

“Okay, lover,” she said. “I got it. And I’m ready.”

“If the place is really here,” said Flojian, “I can’t believe there’s not another entrance.”

Claver shook his head. “There’d be a lot of ground to search. Let’s use the way we know. Once inside, we can see what else is available.”

Chaka put on a pair of gloves, stuffed a bar into her belt, and walked to the edge.

“Luck,” said Flojian.

She flashed a smile, straddled the ladder, and began to back down over the cliff edge. Quait paid out the safety line.

The ladder’s rungs were wooden. But it was hard to get her feet onto them until the rock wall curved away somewhat. She kept her eyes on Quait as long as she could. She did not look down, but she felt the presence of the void. There seemed to be a damned lot of business with heights on this trip.

But it was surprisingly easy going once she got below the summit.

“Are you okay?” Flojian’s voice drifted down.

She assured him she was and continued the descent. Every few steps they’d ask again and as she got farther away it became more distracting until finally she called up that she’d yell if she needed anything and please otherwise keep quiet.

Once she ran out of slack and had to signal. The rock was rougher than it had looked from above. Vegetation was sharp and prickly. At one point it snagged the ladder and she had to hang by one hand while she worked it free.

Streams of pebbles dribbled past. Vertical fissures appeared. From a dark hole, a pair of eyes watched her.

A sudden burst of wind hit her and she swung gently back and forth, clinging to the ladder. Below her, right where it was supposed to be, she saw the discolored rock. It looked exactly like a set of doors. “A little more,” she called up. “I think we’ve got it.”

There were actually
four
doors set in the face of the cliff. This was where Showron Voyager’s bullet-shaped vehicle had delivered its passengers. So there had been a terminal here once. Several pieces of iron remained, supports outside, beams inside. And a bench. One of the doors was wedged open. She had some difficulty gaining purchase because the ladder was hanging a couple of feet out, as a result of the overhead bulge. But she swung herself close, grabbed a wiry bush, and tried to get inside.

The scariest part of the entire operation came when she tried to climb off the ladder and get through the doorway. There wasn’t enough slack and they didn’t seem to understand up there that if they kept the safety line tight she couldn’t move. Moreover, she had to hang on to the bush to keep the ladder close until she was safely through the open door. When it was over she wasted no time releasing the safety line. She congratulated herself and called up that she was okay. The high-roofed corridor Knobby had described lay beyond. But it was too dark to see more than a few yards.

“Chaka.” Quait’s voice. “We need to tie the ladder down.”

“Right.” The ladder was about three feet out. Just beyond easy reach.

She tried for it twice. The second time she lost her balance and almost fell. It was a desperate moment. And it was stupid because they didn’t need to do it this way. “Quait.”

“Yes. What’s taking so long?”

“I can’t reach it. I need someone to come down.”

Flojian came next, with lamps dangling from his belt. When he reached the doorway, she caught his hand and pulled him in. And the ladder along with him. They tied it to a beam and lit the lamps while they waited for Claver.

Quait was last to descend, having looped his safety line around the tree and dropped it to them so that someone would be holding the other end.

When he’d joined them, they pushed through into the inner passageway. Beyond, in the gloomy light thrown by the lamps, they saw the stairway and the corridor and the shafts. The shafts were very much like the ones in the towers around Union Station. Chaka looked down into one. “Damp,” she said. She found a couple of pebbles and tossed them in. After a few seconds, they splashed.

The air was stale away from the door.

Claver indicated his surprise that the air was breathable at all, until Flojian noted a duct cover in the ceiling. There was a system of vents.

The stairway was not cut from rock, but rather was an insert, made of Roadmaker metal. The handrail and the stairs were covered with dust.

They picked up their equipment and started down. Flojian took the lead.

Chaka had never quite believed the story about the six deaths. When people die in groups, they don’t die without marks. She noticed that Quait kept his hand close to his weapon.

That Flojian harbored similar feelings was evident. He moved as quietly as he could, spoke in a hushed voice, and everything about his demeanor suggested that he was controlling his own set of devils. That was an unusual attitude for him: He was given to caution, but Chaka rarely saw him frightened. Nevertheless, he stayed in front.

Even Claver seemed intimidated, and had little to say. He carried a coil of rope and a bar, but he was probably not aware he gripped the bar like a weapon.

The dark was tangible. It squeezed the light from their lamps. Shadows moved grotesquely around the walls. They could hear the wind, seemingly in the rock. Corridors opened at each level. The shafts were always there, of course, and beyond they saw doorways, sometimes open, sometimes not.

“The walls are wet,” said Claver. “This isn’t a place
I’d
use for storage.”

“It was probably military,” suggested Quait. “Whatever it might have become in later years it was originally a military or naval installation.”

The stairway wound back and forth, landing by landing, until they concluded they must surely be near the base of the cliff. And then it ended. Broke off.

“This is probably where they found your father,” Chaka told Flojian.

Quait stood at the edge of the landing, held his lamp out, and looked down. They could see a floor.

That’s where they died
.

“No dust here,” said Claver.

There wasn’t. The landing was clean. So were five or six stairs above the landing. Above that, the dust was thick. Curious.

The floor was about twenty-five feet down.

“Maybe,” Claver continued, “they opened a door and released a pocket of gas.”

That was close to making sense. It was akin to what had happened to Jon Shannon when
he
opened the wrong door. But there was a missing element. “There was no explosion,” Chaka said.

“Don’t need one. They start breathing gas, lose consciousness, and they smother.”

“All
six
of them?”

“Well,” Claver admitted, “it
does
require a stretch.”