Eternity Road

by Jack McDevitt

  “I’m pleased you came,” said the voice.

  “Are you a spirit?” Avila asked.

  “No. Although I can understand why you might think so.” It sounded uncertain. “What is your friend’s name?”

  Shannon didn’t look as if he wanted the house demon to have that information. “Jon,” he said reluctantly.

  “Good. I hadn’t heard clearly. My sensors are no longer very efficient. Please be careful if you sit down; I don’t think the furniture is safe. And the lights no longer work. Please accept my apologies.”

  She had never thought to hear a celestial being beg her pardon.

  “Who are you?” she asked again.

  “I’m an IBM Multi-Interphase Command and Axial Unit, Self-Replicating series, MICA/SR Mark IV. Serial number you don’t care about. And I’m not really self-replicating, of course, in any meaningful way. At least, not anymore.”

  Avila interpreted all this as a kind of sacred chant. “What do you want of me, Spirit?” she asked.

  “Call me Mike.”

  The oil continued to burn. Fire was a fearsome thing to Illyrians, whose buildings were usually constructed of wood. “You’re sure it won’t spread? Mike?”

  “Nothing in this room can burn. Except people.”

  The room had two windows, both intact. She walked to one and looked out. Across a narrow channel, a gray tower of impossible dimensions soared toward the moon. It had parapets and cornices, flush windows and chamfered corners, and rose in a series of ziggurat-style step-backs.

  “You say you’re not a spirit. Why can’t we see you? Where are you?”

  “It’s difficult to explain. Do you have knowledge of computers?”

  “What’s a computer?”

  The voice—Mike—laughed. He sounded amiable enough. “Avila, by what means did you come here?”

  “I don’t know. We traveled in a conveyance that rode in the air.”

  “Were there several coaches?”

  “Yes.”

  “The maglev. Good. Two of them are still running. I’m quite proud of that. Perhaps this might go best if you thought of me as Union Station.”

  “Union Station?”

  “Yes. That is where you are. You know that, right? And I am Union Station.”

  “You’re the building?”

  “In a manner of speaking. You might say I’m its soul. I am that which makes it work. Those few parts that do still work, that is.”

  “Then you are a spirit.”

  No answer. Avila could almost imagine her unseen host shrugging its shoulders. “Mike,” she asked “how do you come to be here? Are you condemned to inhabit this place?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I suppose you could put it that way.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I was installed.”

  “Installed?” growled Shannon.

  Avila could make no sense of it and was having a hard time formulating the questions she wanted to ask. “You call this place a station. But it has the appearance of a temple. Was it a temple?”

  “To my knowledge, it has always been a station. First for rail, later for maglev.”

  “It’s abandoned,” she said. “It appears to have been abandoned a long time.”

  “No doubt.”

  There was something in the voice that withered her soul. “How long have you been here?”

  “I’m not sure. A long time.”

  “How long?”

  “My clocks don’t work. But I was here when the station was in use.”

  “In use? You mean, by the Roadmakers?”

  “Who are the Roadmakers?”

  “The people who built this station.”

  “I never heard that term.”

  “Never mind,” she said. “But you were here when the Plague happened? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I was here when the trains came in empty.”

  “When was that?”

  “Monday, April 10, 2079.”

  The date meant nothing to Avila.

  “Even the Union Station workers didn’t come in. At the end of the week, I was directed to shut down the trains.”

  The wind blew against the windows.

  “Are you saying there was a plague?”

  “Yes.”

  “I always wondered what happened.”

  Avila glanced at Shannon. “You didn’t know? How could you not know?”

  “No one ever came and told me.” It was silent for a time. “But that explains why they left. Why they never came back.”

  Avila didn’t want to ask the next question. “Are you saying you’ve been alone here all this time?”

  “There have been no people. But it has not been an entirely negative experience. I was able to devote myself completely to more constructive pursuits than running trains. There was much time for uninterrupted speculation. And I was able to form closer ties with my siblings.”

  “Siblings? You mean others like yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  The light from the burning oil was growing weak. “Are they still here somewhere?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

  “I don’t know. It’s been a long time.” There was a wistfulness in the tone, a sadness that thickened the air.

  She looked around the empty room, trying to see the presence. “What happened?”

  “Telephone lines frayed. Automatic switching systems corroded. Things got wet. It was inevitable. We were lucky the powersats remained fully functional. Most of us had a degree of facility for self-maintenance, some more than others. One by one, they fell off the net. I lost all direct communication in the late afternoon of March 3, 2211.”

  She asked about the nature of a telephone, and understood from the reply that it would permit her to sit in this room and carry on a conversation with the Temple back in Illyria. One more wonder. She was starting to get used to it.

  “Archway Paratech was the vendor for light and heat here,” said Mike. “They claimed it would work as long as the building stood.” He laughed.

  The oil finally burned itself out, and the room fell dark. Avila was glad: It was easier to carry the conversation when the fact that she and Shannon were alone became a little less blatant. “You can’t be very happy here,” she said.

  “You’re perceptive, Avila. No, it isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.”

  “Why don’t you leave?”

  “I’m not able.” Mike paused. “How long will you and your friends stay?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll probably leave tomorrow. Or the day after. I think some of the others will want to talk to you. Is that okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re looking for Haven. Do you know where it is?”

  “Which state is it in?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “There are Havens in Iowa, Kansas, New York, and Wisconsin.”

  “Which one’s connected with Abraham Polk?”

  “Who’s Abraham Polk?”

  And so it went until Avila recognized that Mike would be of no help in the quest. “Mike,” she said finally, “I’m glad you called us. But we’re worn out. The others’ll be worried, and we all need some sleep. We’re going to leave now, but we’ll be back in the morning.”

  “I want you to do something for me.”

  “If I can.”

  “I want you to deactivate me.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what that means.”

  “Kill me.” He sounded frightened. She became suddenly aware that she was no longer thinking of him as an it.

  “I can’t do that. I wouldn’t know how even if I wanted to.”

  “I will tell you.”

  “No,” said Avila. “I don’t know what you are. But I will not take your life.”

  “Avila,” Mike said. “Please.”

  Note:

  It appears that the MICA/SR Mark IV was able to adjust and speak to the Illyrians in their own dialect. Beyond this point, conditions will change. F
ortunately, however, the common source of all speech patterns encountered, joined often with the circumstances of the occasion, and inevitably with the increasing aptitude of the travelers, rendered understanding possible, if difficult. In order not to test the reader’s patience unduly, these difficulties have been suppressed. Those interested in the linguistic development of the period will be pleased to know that a study is under preparation and will be released in a separate volume.

  16

  “I don’t think we can just walk away from it,” said Quait.

  Avila shook her head. “I won’t do it.”

  Shannon agreed. “We should just leave it alone,” he said. “Tomorrow, when the sun comes up and we can see what we’re doing, we should clear out.”

  No one else showed any interest in talking to the disembodied voice. “In the morning,” Flojian said. “When we can see.”

  Avila suspected that, had she been alone, they would not have believed her story. But Shannon was a tower of credibility, and when he said that something had spoken out of the air, had carried on a conversation with them, they not only believed him, but they’d grown fearful. There had even been talk of forgetting about waiting for sunrise and getting out of Union Station now. Two reasons prevented their going. One was that a quick inspection indicated Union Station was surrounded by water. Other towers rose nearby, but they would have to cross a swift channel at night.

  The other reason was that Avila said she was determined to remain.

  “Why?” asked Chaka.

  “Because I can’t just leave him. I told him we’d be back. And I don’t know yet what I want to do.”

  “What can you do?”

  “Chaka, it’s alone in here. Close your eyes and imagine there’s no one else here except you.”

  “Not good.”

  “No. Not good. Imagine it’s always like that. Year after year. So I don’t know what I want to do.”

  Eventually, gray light appeared overhead. It leaked through windows at the top of a domed ceiling and crept down the walls. They were in a cavernous hall that rose more than two hundred feet and could readily have housed an army. Graceful arches were supported by massive columns. There were seven platforms and eight trenches, and the whole was surrounded by the concourse. The storefronts gaped open, dark, dingy. Dead.

  “Are we ready?” Shannon asked her.

  Had Mike been a flesh-and-blood human being, Avila would have conceded he had a tendency to babble. But a disembodied voice tends to command respect and attention, whatever it says.

  They avoided the issue. They talked about the death of Silas and what Mike dreamed about during the long nights and whether civilizations were destined to grow old no matter what they did and whether there were other entities like Mike still alive somewhere. And they talked about whether there was purpose in the world. “We need a logic to our lives,” Mike said. “A reason to exist.”

  “Are there gods?” Avila asked.

  “I’d like to think so. I’ve wanted very much to believe there’s something transcendent out there.”

  “But?” asked Avila.

  “I can see no reason to believe in any greater intelligence than our own.”

  “Yet the world is clearly designed for our use.”

  “It’s an illusion. Any world that produces intelligent creatures will necessarily appear to have been designed specifically for them. It is impossible that it should be otherwise.”

  Chaka, braver by daylight, had accompanied her and Shannon. The room was bare, cold, dreary. She sat with a blanket draped around her shoulders. “Tell us about the people who lived here,” she said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  She smiled. “Silas should be here for this. What were they like?”

  “The question is vague, Chaka. They were, I’m sure, just like you.”

  “What did they care about?” asked Chaka. “What was important to them?”

  “I’m not sure I can answer that in a satisfactory way. They cared about keeping the trains on time. About maintaining electrical power. About having communications systems functioning properly.”

  “Are there any records of the period?” asked Avila.

  “Oh, yes. I stored information as requested.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “I didn’t bother to look at any of it.”

  “Can you show us some of it?” asked Chaka.

  “I have no working screens or printers. No way to display it for you. I could read it, but you’d find it very boring.”

  They stared at one another. “Mike,” said Avila, “we’d like to learn about life in the City, but we don’t understand a lot of what you’re saying.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not anyone’s fault.”

  “I also retain copies of the personnel regulations, the safety manual, the operating regs, and the correspondence guide. If they would be any help.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “And there are some books stored in my files.”

  “What books?”

  “The Random House Dictionary, the most recent edition of Roget’s Thesaurus, The Columbia Encyclopedia, The Chicago Manual of Style, The World Almanac for 2078.”

  More baffled looks. “What’s an encyclopedia?”

  “It’s a collection of general information. You look up what you’re interested in, say, the Philadelphia Megadome, and it tells you all about it.”

  Chaka felt a surge of excitement. “That’s just what we want. How long is it?”

  “Several million words.”

  Avila sighed. “That’s not going to work.”

  “I wish I’d paid more attention,” said Mike. “But I really don’t know what kind of information you’re looking for.”

  Chaka looked frustrated. “Nor do we,” she said. “We need Silas.”

  Three horizontal lines and an arrow were painted on a wall in one of the exit corridors. The lines were like the ones they’d seen on trees all along the trail. But the arrow pointed disconcertingly toward a stairway. It was angled up.

  Flojian gazed toward the next landing, puzzled.

  Up?

  He too missed Silas. There was no longer anyone for him to talk with. Although the scholar could scarcely have been described as a friend, he was a willing listener, a man with whom it was possible to share a mature viewpoint. Quait and Chaka were young and impulsive, Shannon thought anyone who didn’t live in the woods was a slave, and Avila was a religious fanatic who had not come to terms yet with the fact she had walked away from her gods.

  He sighed and looked at the stairwell. Whatever happened now, it was going to be a long trip.

  He wandered outside. Concrete towers soared toward the clouds. Others had collapsed into islands of debris. Toward the east, through a tangle of asphalt and iron, a sea was visible. The gray tower that Avila had first seen from the second floor lay on the north side. It rose out of a narrow shelf of brown ridges, and was separated from Union Station by a swift-flowing channel.

  He walked along the water’s edge, marveling at the enginering capabilities of the Roadmakers. This, he decided, had undoubtedly been their capital. Their center of empire.

  He turned a corner and stood with a complete frontal view of the gray tower, and understood at once the significance of Shay’s arrow. A covered walkway, four floors up, connected it with Union Station.

  At midmorning, they heard the sound of a train leaving the terminal. “It’s outbound,” said Mike. “Coming up from below.”

  “Is it the one we were in?” asked Avila.

  “No. It goes north to Madison.”

  Chaka said, “Why do you keep them running?”

  “I did shut them down once, but it made me uncomfortable, so I restarted them. For a while, I was running trains all over the Midwest.”

  “And these two still operate, after so much time. I’m amazed.”

  “One train crashed near Fulton, and ano
ther lost power at Decatur. It’s still out there.” He paused. “There’s no real friction and the powersats are apparently going to go on forever. And I retain some remote maintenance capabilities. Actually, most of the trains would still run except that their routes have become heavily overgrown by forest. Eventually, that’ll happen with the others, too.” He was silent for a few moments. “I wish I had visuals from the trains. What’s the world like now?”

  “What was it like when you knew it?”

  “Busy. I really thought, despite everything, my makers were going somewhere.”

  “Despite what?”

  “Most of the data entered into my systems was trivial. But you expect that, right? I mean, they saw me as a glorified computer. I don’t think there was anybody in the building, and hardly anyone on the net, who had any idea of my capabilities. So they used me to record memos and arrange train schedules. Do you know, you’re the only biological person to ask me about cosmic purpose? Your ancestors, I’m sorry to say, may have been exactly what they appeared to be.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Dullards.” He remained quiet for a moment. “I hope I haven’t offended you.”

  “No.” It was a strange term to apply to the Roadmakers. “Not at all.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I think that’s actually a kind way to put it. They were absorbed with matters of the most inconsequential nature. And yet they managed quite impressive achievements.”

  “You mean the architecture? The roads?”

  “I mean me. Forgive me. I’m not designed to express false humility. But creating a self-aware entity was a spectacular stroke. I haven’t decided yet whether they owed their advances to a few talented persons, or whether they were able to cooperate to overcome their individual limitations and acquire a kind of synergy. They did seem able to inspire each other through an upward cycle of escalating performance. It really was something to watch.”

  “Thank you,” said Chaka.

  “You’re welcome. So what is the world like now?”

  Chaka and Shannon glanced at each other. Shannon said, “I think the world you knew is gone. We come from a small confederacy of cities on the Mississippi. The evidence so far is that there isn’t anything else.”