Eternity Road

by Jack McDevitt

  “This is the rip-panel rope,” Claver explained. “When we get close to the ground, during landing, we’ll open a panel in the top of the envelope and dump the remaining hydrogen.”

  “Why?” asked Flojian. “Why not just try to tie up somewhere? And save whatever’s left?”

  “Only if you like broken limbs. No, we need to get rid of it when we touch down. It doesn’t matter; there won’t be that much left anyhow. Just enough to drag us along the ground.” He laughed. “I know it sounds a little dangerous but balloons are really much safer than traveling by horse.”

  Bags of sand were strung around the exterior of the gondola. That was their ballast, Claver explained. “We want to go up, we get rid of some ballast.”

  The process of filling the envelope was finished by about midnight. Quait and Chaka had watched from the back porch. When Claver disconnected the hydrogen pump, an eerie silence fell across the grounds. The balloon strained against its frame, bathed in moonlight, anxious to be free of the ground.

  “We’ll top it off tomorrow, before we leave,” said Claver.

  The pump was mounted on a cart. He threw a couple of covers over it, said goodnight to his guests, and went inside.

  Quait put an arm around Chaka. “You excited?”

  “Yes. It’s been a long haul, and I’m anxious to see the end of it.”

  “I hope it doesn’t fizzle.”

  “The project?” She moved close to him. “Or the balloon?”

  Next day, they brought aboard a supply of fruit, water, dried fish, and meat. Drawn by the activity, a small crowd of children and adults arrived to see them off. The adults, of whom there were about twenty, insisted on shaking hands with Claver and each of his passengers. “Good luck,” they said. As if they would need it. The kids yelped and chased one another around the gondola.

  Claver added a rope ladder to their supplies and handed out pairs of smoked goggles. He made a show of adjusting his (which were somewhat flashier than their mates), zipped up a leather jacket, threw a white scarf around his neck, and announced that it was time to go. Two burly volunteers separated themselves from the crowd and took up posts beside dangling ropes on either side of the wooden framework.

  The Illyrians climbed in. Flojian whispered a prayer, Chaka glanced at the envelope, and Quait took a final lingering look at the ground. Claver was last to come aboard. He asked if they were ready and, on receiving assent, signaled the two volunteers. They tugged on the ropes, the wooden framework creaked, and the balloon began to rise.

  A loud cheer went up with them. People stopped in roads and fields to wave. Others, apparently drawn by the commotion, came out of houses, looked up, and joined in.

  Nothing in Quait’s life, not getting shot at, not the maglev, not even the ghostly voice in Union Station, quite touched his primal fears as near to the bone as did watching the earth fall away. He’d never been bothered by heights, and was surprised that rising above the treetops induced such an unseemly sensation. The others, to his annoyance, seemed to be enjoying the experience.

  “We’ll not only be flying over terra incognita,” said Claver, “but you’ll be interested in knowing that we’ll be going almost twice as far from home as the balloon has ever traveled before.” If that piece of information excited the old man, it did nothing to ease Quait’s apprehension.

  “Look at these.” Claver indicated two lines that hung down from the interior of the balloon. One carried a yellow flag, the other a red. “This one,” the yellow one, “controls the hydrogen valve on top. This one,” the red, “you already know about. It’s the rippanel.” He nodded somberly. “It would be a good idea if nobody touches either. Okay?”

  Quait looked east across rolling countryside, farms and orchards and a tangle of roads and rivers fading gradually to forest. There were vehicles on the roads, boats in the rivers, people in the fields. Then these too were gone, and they drifted above pure wilderness. He listened to the wind, to the creaking of the gondola, to the barking of a distant dog.

  “It’s lovely,” said Chaka.

  Quait had looked down from high places before, from mountaintops and the Iron Pyramid and the bridge on which they’d lost Silas. But this was a different order of experience altogether. It incorporated a disconnectedness, a sense of having broken away from the ground, a suggestion of both freedom and vulnerability. If it could not be said that he was enjoying the ride, he could at least understand why others might become addicted to floating in the clouds.

  But they were drifting south. The wrong way.

  “Be patient,” said Claver. “We have to find a friendly wind current.” With which remark he plunged a scoop into one of the sandbags attached to the handrail, filled it, and gave the sand to the sky. The balloon went higher.

  “You’re sure we won’t have any trouble getting down,” said Quait.

  Claver squeezed his shoulder. “None whatever, my young friend. I can assure you that eventually, one way or another, we will get down.”

  Flojian was working on a diagram of the balloon’s inflating appendix, but the wind kept worrying at the paper until he finally gave up. He seemed far more interested in the mechanics of the vehicle than he did in the view.

  Claver found his wind and they drifted through the afternoon, moving at a steady clip toward the northeast. “I’d estimate about thirty miles an hour,” he said. Quait was impressed. Thirty miles needed a day and a half on the ground.

  There were Roadmaker towns, often no more than a few charred ruins.

  “You get a better sense of the scale of destruction from up here.” Claver adjusted his goggles. He did that a lot.

  “The Plague must have been terrible,” said Flojian.

  “That’s a safe guess.” Claver looked down. “There were a lot of people during Roadmaker times. You ever see Boston or New York? Oh, you’d know if you had. Very big. Enormous. Not anything like Brockett. You get a good sickness into that population, it’d run wild.”

  They picked up a dirt road and followed it east.

  “How high are we?” asked Chaka.

  Claver sucked his lips. “About a mile and a half.”

  The road came to a river, which it leaped on a new log bridge. A stockade guarded the near side. “The frontier,” Claver explained. Thick forest and rugged hills ran to the horizon. Even the road seemed to fade out. “We’ll have the same problem eventually.”

  “Plague?” asked Flojian.

  “Population. If we come back in thirty, forty years, this’ll all be farmland.”

  By sundown they were crossing a Roadmaker double highway. It came out of the north, broad and straight, and from their altitude it looked unbroken. Ahead, a range of white-capped peaks loomed.

  It was cold, and getting colder. They distributed the blankets and pulled them around their shoulders. “If we went lower,” suggested Flojian, “we might get warmer air.”

  “Might,” said Claver. “We might also get currents that are going the wrong way. We don’t have hydrogen and ballast to waste running up and down.”

  They ate and watched the mountains approach. The land rose under them, snow and granite and forest. It mounted up and up, gradually at first, and then sharply, and they were drifting over peaks so close they could smell the spruce. And then the land fell away again. The sun went down and the darkness below went on forever.

  A full moon rose. “With a little bit of luck,” said Claver, “we should be over the ocean by dawn.”

  They arranged a rotating night watch.

  Claver explained that they wanted to keep the north star forty-five degrees off the port side of their line of advance. “Obviously, we won’t maintain that with any degree of exactitude. But if we get too far off course, say thirty degrees or more for longer than a few minutes, wake me.”

  They managed some privacy by holding a blanket for one another. A bucket hung from the underside of the craft, and this was hauled aboard when needed, and after use its contents were dumped. Flojian
and Claver exchanged amused comments about the risks for travelers on the ground.

  Quait took the first watch. Chaka stayed close to him for a while, and he was grateful for her warmth. Then she climbed beneath a blanket and was quickly asleep, rocked by the gentle movements of the gondola.

  Following Claver’s suggested method, Quait picked out a landmark, a hill, a patch of trees, a river bend, occasionally a mountain, anything that was forty-five degrees forward of the north star. Then he settled down to watch it draw nearer. As long as it continued to do so in a more or less straightforward manner, he was satisfied. On one occasion, a highway intersection that he was guiding on veered far to starboard. That meant the balloon had begun to move almost due north. He woke the pilot.

  Claver was cheerful enough about being disturbed, and seemed to enjoy having been called on to set things right. He tugged on the yellow line until the balloon started to descend. His manner suggested all this was really quite basic. Within a few minutes he had the vehicle back on course and, in his condescending manner, asked to be awakened again if there were any more difficulties.

  Quait knew how to make the balloon rise and fall. What he did not understand was how to determine where favorable air currents would be. “I don’t know how to explain it,” Claver told him later. “Experience, I guess.”

  Sleep came hard for Quait. It might have been the cold. Or the smell of salt air. Or the impending end of the hunt. But most likely it was Chaka’s proximity. On the trail, he had prudently maintained a discreet distance. Here, she lay breathing softly, within easy reach.

  He sighed, got up, and joined Claver, who was at the helm, or whatever constituted a helm on this windrunner. The sky was ablaze with the rising sun, and they were running parallel to a rocky shore.

  Claver was doing knee bends. “I recommend it,” he said. “Keeps you warm and flexible.”

  “How are we doing?” asked Quait.

  “Okay.” There was a note of self-satisfaction in his voice. “The wind wants to take us out to sea.”

  “Don’t let it happen.”

  “I won’t.” He flexed shoulders and arms, not unlike a boxer. “But we’re spending a lot of gas and ballast.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Starting to be.”

  Quait settled back to watch the sunrise. The pilot passed him some nuts and water. “Not much of a breakfast,” Claver admitted. “But with luck, we’ll be on the ground anyway in a few hours.”

  “I’ve seen the ocean before,” Quait said. “At the mouth of the Mississippi.”

  “What direction was it from the land mass?”

  “South.”

  Claver thought it over. “I wonder if it’s the same body of water? It might be possible for you to go home by sea.”

  Quait laughed. “Anything would be an improvement on the overland route.” He looked toward the rising sun and the curving horizon and wondered what lay beyond. “Could you get to Chicago in this thing?” he asked.

  “If we had enough hydrogen. And the wind was right. But I don’t think I’d want to try it.”

  They began to drift, and he had to take them up and then down to get the balloon moving forward again. It gave Quait a little satisfaction to see that even Claver didn’t guess right all the time. But the sandbags were emptying fast.

  They floated north over a rugged coastline, an endless series of cliffs, shoals, inlets, and offshore islands. They saw deer and wild horses and, on occasion, signs of habitation. There were a few plowed fields, some orchards, a house on a bluff overlooking a harbor. Gray smoke billowed out of the chimney. Later they saw a small boat casting nets. But these were the exceptions. For the most part, there was only wilderness.

  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.”

  29

  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?