Eternity Road

by Jack McDevitt

  His rich brown hair hung to his shoulders. Like most of the young men of the period, he was clean-shaven. He rode silently at her side and there was no tension between them.

  Maybe it was time.

  She straightened herself in the saddle. “I’d like very much to know where it came from,” she said.

  “I can’t see that it matters, Chaka.” He commented idly on the weather, noting how extremely pleasant it was. He looked around, surveying the sunlight and the river, and his glance took in the Iron Pyramid, rising in the south. “He probably found it in a ruin somewhere.”

  “Maybe.” The road wound into thick, lush forest. It began its long climb up the series of ridges that formed the eastern bank. A military patrol cantered past, resplendent in blue uniforms and white plumes. Their officer saluted Chaka.

  “What else?” asked Raney, swinging around in his saddle to watch the horsemen ride away.

  “I don’t know. I think there’s more to this than Flojian’s telling.”

  Raney’s eyes came to rest on her. “I can’t imagine what it could be,” he said patiently.

  “Nor can I. But I just don’t understand what happened.”

  “Look, the truth is probably very simple. He felt guilty about being the only survivor of the expedition. Anybody would. So he gave you his most valuable possession. It’s an offering, an act of penance. He was trying to soothe his conscience. I don’t think there’s anything very mysterious about it.”

  “Why did he wait until he died?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If he was trying to soothe his conscience, why didn’t he soothe it while he was alive?”

  “That’s easy, Chaka. Because he didn’t want to let go of the book. So you become an heir. That way, he wins all the way around. He can be generous with you, and it doesn’t cost him anything. We know he didn’t like his son, so he makes a statement there, too.”

  The conversation drifted to other, more mundane, topics. One of the senators had been caught in a tax scandal. Business at Raney’s establishment was picking up. One of Chaka’s friends had begun studying for the priesthood.

  “What I can’t understand,” she said, as they rode through Baffle’s Pass, where the trees intertwine and form a green tunnel almost a hundred yards long, “is that Karik didn’t tell anybody about this. Not anybody.”

  When he saw it was hopeless to try to save the animal, Arin let it go and swam for shore. We thought he’d make it, but every time he got close, the current pushed him out again.

  She could not get the image clear in her mind: Arin’s clumsy stroke fighting the rushing waters.

  Afterward, Chaka was never certain precisely when she made up her mind to break into Flojian’s villa. She went to bed that night with a picture of the north wing in her mind, and her stomach churning. Sleep did not come. She progressed from contemplating the ferry operator’s secret to considering the consequences of getting caught. She thought about spending the rest of her life wondering why Karik Endine had concealed his discovery. The mechanics of actually doing a break-in did not seem daunting. Presumably the doors and windows on the ground floor would be locked. She remembered seeing a tree whose limbs overhung the house on the north. It should be possible to climb the tree and drop down onto the roof. Once that far, she could get in through the courtyard or from one of the balconies. She’d almost brought the subject up with Raney on the ride home, to give him the opportunity to volunteer. But she knew he would not. He would instead try to dissuade her, and would eventually become annoyed if she persisted, and condescending if she didn’t.

  Flojian was away. There was only Toko, who would certainly be asleep in the servant’s quarters.

  Not really intending to do it, she went over the details in her mind, where she would leave Piper, how to approach the property, what might go wrong, how she would gain entrance, whether there were any dogs about. (She couldn’t remember any.) As she lay safe and warm in the big bed, she realized gradually there was no real obstacle. And she owed it to her brother to proceed.

  She considered how easy it would be, and her heart began to beat faster.

  When Silas had joked with Chaka about burglarizing Karik’s home, he was, of course, expressing the wish that it would happen but that he wouldn’t have to do it. This is not to imply that Silas was a coward. His shoulder still ached from a bullet taken during service with the militia. He had stayed behind during the six-month plague to help the priests with the victims. And on one particularly memorable occasion, he had used a stick to face down a cougar.

  Nor was he above bending a law or two to get his way. As he often reminded his students, laws are not ethics. But the risk entailed in a break-in daunted him. How would it look if an ethics instructor were caught burglarizing the home of a friend?

  He was still smiling at the thought when he assumed his place in front of an evening seminar in the Imperium.

  The Imperium was not an academic institution in the traditional sense. Its students, privileged and generally talented, might more properly be thought of as participants in an ongoing effort to extend human knowledge. Or to recover it, for it was obvious that much had been lost.

  The questions naturally arising from the single unrelenting fact of the ruins dominated Illyrian thought. Who were these people? What systems of law and government sustained them? What purposes had they set out for themselves? What was the extent of the ruins?

  The young men came when their own schedules permitted, and they discussed philosophy or geometry with whichever masters happened to be available. They were driven by pride and curiosity, they were highly motivated, and they wanted to understand the Roadmakers. It was an important goal, because something more elemental than mere technology had been lost. The Plague had killed indiscriminately, had carried off whole populations, and with them had gone whatever driving force had produced the great roadways and the structures that touched the clouds. Beyond the walls of the Imperium, the Illyrians had built a society whose sole purpose was to maintain political stability and an economic status quo. There was little discernible drive for progress.

  The operations of the Imperium were funded by the Illyrian treasury, and by donations from wealthy parents and, increasingly, from those who had attended in their youth, and who came by periodically to join discussions which ranged from the mechanics of astronomy to the reality of the gods to the unwieldy relationship between diameter and circumference. (A school of skeptics were then using the latter fact to argue that the universe was ill conceived and irrational.)

  The nine masters had been selected as much for their ability to inspire as for their knowledge. They were entertainers as well as teachers, and they were the finest entertainers that Illyria could produce. Silas was proud of his work and considered himself, not entirely without justification, one of the city’s foremost citizens.

  He was conscious that there were in fact two Silas Glotes: one who was shy and uncertain of himself, who disliked attending social gatherings where he was expected to mix with strangers; and another who could dazzle people he had never seen before with wit and insight. In fact, all of the masters seemed to display, to a degree, this tendency toward a dual personality. Bent Capa, for example, mumbled at dinner but rose to eloquence in the courtyards.

  In the seminars, subjects were designated, but once started, a discussion might lead anywhere. There was no formal curriculum, and the philosophy of the institution saw more benefit in exposure to a wise master than to a formal body of instruction. Given the level of interest among those in attendance, the system could hardly fail to work.

  The death of Karik Endine had ignited discussions in many of the seminars, particularly with regard to Haven and the Abraham Polk legend. Librarians reported that both copies of The Travels were in constant use. Polk became the issue of the hour: Was he historical? Or mythical? If he was historical, had he indeed devoted himself to rescuing the knowledge of the Roadmakers?

  Silas was of sever
al minds on the matter. He wanted to believe in the tale of the adventurer who lived on the edge of a dying world, who with a small band of devoted companions carried on a desperate campaign to save the memory of that world against the day when civilization would come again. It was a magnificent story.

  And it was possible. Not all the trappings, of course. There had certainly never been a Quebec, the mystical boat that possessed neither sails nor oars, that was capable of diving into the depths of the sea. Nor the undersea entrance to Haven, accessible, presumably, only to the submersible. Nor could Polk have rescued all the people for whom he was credited.

  Maybe Polk had existed. Maybe someone tried to save something. And the stories got blown out of proportion. In that sense, there might well be a Haven somewhere.

  On the day after his conversation with Quait, a visitor from the Temple, a priest, took her place among the participants in Silas’s assigned conference room. There were nine others, all young men. The seminar’s announced topic was: “Can Men Know the Divine Will?”

  Although women were not expressly forbidden from attending Imperium seminars, they were not encouraged, on the grounds that space was limited and intellectual development was essential for the males from whom the League’s leaders would eventually be selected. But women did visit from time to time, and they were particularly welcome if they had specialized knowledge to contribute or a professional interest in the proceedings.

  Silas took a few minutes to have each of his participants identify himself. Only the priest was an unknown commodity.

  “My name is Avila Kap,” she said. “I represent no one, and I’m here solely because the topic is fascinating.” She smiled disarmingly.

  Avila was about thirty. She wore the green robe of her calling, hood drawn back, white cord fastened about her waist, white sash over her right shoulder. The colors of the prime seasons. Her black hair was cut short. She glanced around the table with dark, intelligent eyes. There was an almost mocking glint in them, as if they were dismissing the Imperium’s reputation as a rationalist institution. Silas thought that her good looks were enhanced by the robe.

  He set the parameters for the dialogue: “In order that we avoid spending the afternoon on extraneous issues, we will assume for purposes of this discussion that divine beings do exist, and that they do take an interest in human affairs. The question then becomes, have they attempted to communicate with us? If so, by what characteristics can we know a divine revelation?”

  Kaymon Rezdik, a middle-aged merchant who had been sporadically attending the seminars longer than Silas could remember, raised his hand. “Considering that we have the Chayla,” he said, “I’m surprised that we’re even having this discussion.”

  “Nonsense,” said Telchik, an occasional visitor from Argon. Most of the others present nodded approvingly. Telchik was a handsome youth, brown-haired and blue-eyed. “If the Chayla is the work of the gods, they speak with many voices.”

  Among the group that day, only Kaymon and one of the younger participants and, of course, the priest, could be described as believers. Most of the others, in the fashion of the educated classes of the time, were skeptics who maintained that either the gods did not exist, or that they took pains to keep well away from the human race. (The view that the gods were survivors from the age of the Roadmakers had been losing ground over the past decade, and had no champions in the field that day.)

  “What characteristics,” asked Silas smoothly, “would you demand of a communication before you would pronounce it to be of divine origin?”

  Kaymon looked puzzled. “The official sanction of the Temple,” he said, glancing hopefully toward Avila.

  “I think,” said Avila, “that, in this case, you are the Temple.”

  “Exactly,” said Silas. “If a message were laid before you, with supernatural claims, how would you arrive at a judgment?”

  Kaymon’s gaze swept left and right, seeking help.

  “There is no way to be sure,” said Telchik, “unless you are standing there when it happens. And even then—”

  “Even then,” said Orvon, an advocate’s son, “we may be seeing only what we wish to see.”

  “Then we may safely conclude,” said Telchik, “that there is no way to know whether a communication does in fact have divine backing.”

  Several of the disputants glanced uncomfortably at Avila, to see how she was taking the general assault on her career. But she watched placidly, with a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

  “And what have you to say of all this?” Silas asked her.

  “They may be right,” she said matter-of-factly. “Even assuming that Shanta exists, we cannot know for certain that she really cares about us. We may well be living in a world that has come about by accident. In which everything is transient. In which nothing matters.” Her eyes were very dark. “I don’t say I believe this, but it is a possibility. But that possibility is outside the parameters of the discussion. I would propose to you that the gods may find us a difficult subject for communication.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Orvon.

  She pressed her palms together. “Orvon, may I ask where you live?”

  “Three miles outside the city. On the heights above River Road.”

  “Good.” She looked pleased. “It’s a lovely location. Let us suppose that, this evening, when you are on your way home, the Goddess herself were to walk out from behind some trees to wish you good day. How would you respond?”

  “He would lose his voice,” laughed Telchik.

  “I suppose it would be a little unnerving.”

  “And if she gave you a message to bring back to us?”

  “I would most certainly do so.”

  She nodded and raised her eyes to encompass the others. “And how would we respond to Orvon’s claim?”

  “Nobody’d believe it,” said Selenico, youngest of the participants.

  “And what,” asked Silas, “if the Goddess had said hello instead to Avila? Would we believe her?”

  “No,” said Orvon, “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” asked Avila.

  “Because you are not objective.”

  “No,” said Silas. “Not because she is not objective, but because she is committed. There is a difference.”

  “Indeed,” rumbled Telchik. “I should like to hear what it is. Shanta would do better to give her message to me.”

  “Yes,” said Avila, brightening, “because if you came with such a story, we still might not believe it, but we would know that something very odd had happened.”

  Sigmon, a young man whose primary interest was in the sciences, suggested that a deity who wished to communicate would necessarily want an unbeliever, to allay suspicions. “And furthermore,” he said, “he might want to go for drama, rather than a simple statement that we should do thus and so.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Kaymon.

  Sigmon’s brow wrinkled. “Well,” he said, “if I were a god, and I wanted to tell the Illyrians that Haven exists—”

  All faces turned in his direction.

  “—I can think of nothing better than inspiring Karik Endine to produce a copy of the Connecticut Yankee.”

  The moon set at about midnight. It was well into the early hours when Chaka got out of the bed in which she had lain sleepless, and dressed. She put on dark blue riding breeches and a black shirt. She had no dark jacket and had to make do with a light brown coat that was more awkward than she would have liked. (The temperature had fallen too far to try to get by without wearing something warm.) She pulled on a pair of moccasins, attached a lamp to her belt, and stopped in her workshop to pick up a couple of thin shaping blades.

  Shortly thereafter she stood in the shadow of Flojian’s villa, listening to his horses move uneasily in the barn. A brisk northern wind shook the trees. The night was dark under banks of clouds. The only lights she could see were out on the river, moving slowly downstream.

  The villa was
dark. The tree on the northern side was higher than she remembered, its branches flimsier. But she got lucky. Before attempting the climb she circled the house, trying windows and doors. The latch on one of the shutters in the rear had not been properly secured and she was able to worry it loose. She opened the window, pulled the draperies apart, and peered into the darkness beyond.

  Seeing nothing to give her pause, she threw a leg over the sill and climbed into the room. This was the first time in her adult life she had flagrantly violated someone’s property, and she was already trying to compose her story in case she got caught.

  Too much alcohol. I didn’t think this looked like my house.

  Or, I fell off my horse last night. Hit my head. I don’t remember anything since. Where am I?

  She was in the reception room where she had first met Silas. To her left was the inner parlor in which Flojian had told her of her bequest. And to the right was the north wing, Karik Endine’s solitary domain. Curtains were drawn across all the windows, and the room was quite dark. She waited for the tables and chairs to appear, and then navigated among them until she found a doorway in the right-hand wall. It opened into more darkness. She went through and closed the door softly behind her.

  It was a passageway. She bumped into a chair, started to feel her way around a server, and knocked over a candlestick holder. It fell with a terrible clatter and she froze.

  But the noise seemed not to attract anyone’s attention. She righted the candlestick holder and passed through another door into a large sitting room, illuminated through a bank of windows. This was, she knew, Karik’s wing. She looked outside to assure herself no one was about, and used a match to light the candle in her lamp.

  The room was masculine, filled with hand-drawn charts and drinking mugs, and heavy oak furniture of a somber cast. (The charts depicted areas of political influence during various eras in the valley’s history.) A chess game, with ornate pieces, was in progress on a tabletop.