Seeing that the Ecolitan had already dismissed him, Jimjoy returned his attention to the groundcar, realizing that his right arm was beginning to stiffen up from holding the heavy kit bag while he stood there.
Thelina continued her conversation with a young trooper, her voice low enough that Jimjoy could not pick up more than fragments of words. The uniform worn by the man was unfamiliar, as was the single insignia on the collar, a dark green triangle within a silver circle. Because planetary police and local Imperial reserves normally adopted Imperial-style uniforms, Jimjoy decided that the man, with the tunic’s similarity to that of the driver’s, had to be some sort of member of the Institute.
The idea of an Institute with a range of uniforms indicated more than tailoring, as did the lack of insignia.
“Are you coming, Major Wright? Ser?” The driver’s voice was low, polite, and mildly insistent.
“In a moment.” Jimjoy decided that Thelina was not about to halt her conversation for good-byes or other pleasantries, and swung the heavy kit bag through the open door of the groundcar. He then slung the hanging bag into the car, leaning inside to drape it over the kit bag. After another look at the oblivious Ecolitan Andruz, he swung himself into the groundcar, closing the door behind him.
Thudd!!
He repressed a wince at the force with which he had shut the door and decided against rubbing his still-sore arm.
The Ecolitan behind the wheel did not blink as she let the vehicle hum smoothly away from the circular drive of the Colonial Grande.
Jimjoy refrained from looking back, but settled himself as comfortably as possible on the rather firm and drab green rear seat.
“Standard transport?” he asked.
“Hardly, Major,” answered the young driver. Her response seemed to be in Old American.
Jimjoy frowned. Had he addressed the question in Panglais or Old American?
While the Panglais of the Empire was the official language of Accord, since it was part of the Empire, most of the settlers had been refugees from the ecollapse of the western hemisphere of Old Earth, assisted and joined by the remnants of the marginally successful colony on Columbia. Yet until the driver had spoken, all he had heard, he was certain, had been Panglais.
“Old American the normal language at the Institute?” He phrased his question in Old American.
“We still call it Anglish, Major. But…yes.”
“How did you know I understood it?”
The driver did not take her eyes off the road, but Jimjoy thought he saw a faint flush at the back of her neck, under the dark skin he had thought was tanned but now suspected was a naturally dark complexion.
She swallowed once, then answered. “I didn’t. I thought you must if you were coming to visit the Institute.”
Jimjoy nodded. A full background on one Major Jimjoy Earle Wright had been circulated. What hadn’t been broadcast to the winds?
“How far is it?”
“By groundcar? Another two standard hours.”
“Are we going all the way by groundcar?”
“I was told you were adverse to Institute flitters, and that you wanted to see as much of Accord as possible. The car was available.”
Jimjoy sighed silently, letting himself enjoy a rueful smile. The transportation arrangements had to have been the idea of one certain Ecolitan Andruz.
Why, he couldn’t say. Not yet, at least. But he would have bet that her sense of humor was warped, or warped enough for her to enjoy the thought of his sitting on a hard groundcar bench for two hours rather than spending a few minutes in a flitter. The object lesson was clear, intended or not.
He turned his eyes outside. Already the car was leaving Harmony, with only a few scattered homes along the still-broad boulevard that stretched ahead. Two hours! He owed the striking lady something.
Thelina—yes, the lady was certainly striking. Natural silver hair that reminded him of Accord’s sunlight, green eyes, and a complexion that seemed like silvered bronze.
Striking indeed.
His mouth dropped open. Of course she was striking. She had been put there for him to notice. To distract him from noticing others. Once he had been allowed to discover she was an Institute member or agent, he would find it difficult, if not impossible, to recall who else might have been observing him, who else might be tracking him.
He shivered. Such an obvious ploy, and he had swallowed it whole. The undercover business was clearly not his. Clearly. So why was he in it?
He shook his head. A bit late for him to be understanding the difference between espionage and Special Operations.
“You do want to see as much of Accord as possible, Major, don’t you?” asked the driver, interrupting his belated understanding of Thelina’s role.
He forced a grin. “That’s the way it’s been presented. Would you like to provide some commentary on the sights we are passing? Their economic, historical, and military significance?”
“I’ll do my best, Major,” replied the driver without looking back at him.
Jimjoy straightened himself in the seat.
“We are now turning onto the Grand Highway. The highway climbs gradually west from Harmony and is the most direct route between the east and west coasts of Atlantal, at least in the mid-latitudes.”
The Imperial Special Operative concentrated, trying to bring back into clear mental focus the screens upon screens of map projections he had studied.
Atlantal, the main and first settled continent, ran from nearly the north polar ocean to past the planetary equator, the only continent with such a great north-south range. Harmony was roughly forty degrees above the equator, with a temperate climate moderated further by its seaside position on Muir Bay and by the prevailing winds.
Jimjoy did not immediately recall the Grand Highway, but then the Imperial maps had been climate-and relief-based, rather than showing highways or local political jurisdictions.
“Grand…” he muttered, struggling to recall whether there had been an east-west range of hills or mountains near the latitude of the Accord planetary capital.
“Officially, the highway is called the Ridge Continental Transit Corridor. Basically, it follows the mid-continent ridge from coast to coast,” the driver elaborated as she completed a sweeping turn onto an empty highway even wider than the boulevard they had just left.
Jimjoy nodded, visualizing the geography and remembering the odd intersection of continental plates that had left Atlantal with both east-west and north-south lines of mountains.
South of Harmony, the mountains ran generally in east-west bands. North of the capital, the even older hills swept north-south, climbing into the Saradocks, which peaked near the northernmost point of Atlantal.
He pursed his lips briefly as he returned his full attention to the driver and the scenery.
Outside, the well-tended but forest-bordered fields displayed a range of green and dark green plants. The space between the individual plants indicated to Jimjoy that the growing season had a while to go before harvest—certainly consistent with the local calendar of early summer. He saw few dwellings. Given the small total population of Accord, that wasn’t surprising, although he personally would have suspected a larger population center than Harmony. Yet the capital was by far the largest urban area.
Most surprising was the highway. Far too wide and smooth and with far too little traffic for such an impressive engineering work.
Ahead, the road arrowed straight into the haze that cloaked the horizon and muted the dark green of the more distant hills and peaks.
“Rather an imposing highway…for so little traffic.”
“It wasn’t our idea, Major. A legacy of the Empire. Look at it closely.” The driver was smiling.
He shrugged and flexed his shoulders, trying to unstiffen the sore arm and to get more comfortable on the hard seat.
Item: The pavement itself was smooth, without visible joints.
Item: The highway was straight, even when the
geography would have dictated some curves
Item: The cuts through the hills were glassy smooth, so smooth that no vegetation had taken hold.
Item: Tall local trees towered over the edges of the highway shoulder, where the pavement ended, as if cut by a knife.
Jimjoy almost slapped his forehead. He was getting flamed tired of missing everything.
“Imperial Engineers? Another Road to Nowhere?”
The driver nodded.
“Suppose it dates back a good two—three centuries.”
“Almost two. The Institute figures it will last another 2,000 years before the underlying stresses reach the total structure break point.”
“Wouldn’t want to be around then.” Jimjoy laughed harshly.
“Not much chance of that, Major.”
“Suppose you’re right there.”
Impervious to virtually all natural forces except the basic stresses of geology, used or unused, the road would outlast them both. And the resources used to build it probably represented close to as much as the total colonization effort. Needless to say, there had only been two Roads to Nowhere built, according to the footnotes in Engineer history. One was on Tinhorn, and the other had not been mentioned. Obviously, it was on Accord.
Just as obviously, there was more to Accord, far more, than he was seeing, or likely to see. And someone in the Imperial forces didn’t want him to see it.
XIV
AFTER NEARLY TWO hours in the groundcar, Jimjoy was more than willing to admit that his inadvertent refusal of an Institute flitter had been a terrible choice, not even considering the near assassination. Unhappily, he had not thought that turning down the flitter had meant making a choice between ground and air transport.
For the last sixty minutes the highway had not only continued straight but remained absolutely level, roughly five hundred meters below the highest points on the ridge lines of the mountains to the south. Neither had the vegetation visible from the car changed much, nor the tenor of his desultory conversation with the Ecolitan driver.
He was only relieved that his trip had encompassed less than ten percent of the highway’s length, and hoped that it would not encompass much more. The dull silver of the pavement was boring, engineering masterpiece or not.
“Mera, how much farther? What’s on the other side of the hills to our right?”
“Major, we’re less than ten minutes from the Institute. On the other side of the hills are the grounds belonging to the Institute. Training areas, research farm plots, some specialty forests, all sorts of things like that.”
“Airstrips?” he asked innocently.
“A few, but just for transport and medical emergencies. We’re still pretty thinly populated up here.”
Jimjoy smiled wryly. The cadet, or Ecolitan, or whatever they called senior student types, hadn’t liked the idea of driving him all the way on the ground either and had used the incredible smoothness of the highway to best advantage, moving close to the speed of a slow—very slow—flitter, and well above the recommended speed for a groundcar.
During the trip, they had seen only three or four other vehicles, all slow and bulky cargo carriers with wide tires.
“Steamers,” according to Mera, running on actual old-fashioned external combustion engines.
“Why not?” she had answered his question. “They’re cheap, efficient, nonpolluting, and suited to the road. They represent maximum efficient use of resources.”
The last comment had puzzled the Imperial Major. Accord would not have to worry about resource shortages for centuries, if even then, especially with some of the metal-rich moons circling the fourth and fifth planets in the system. So why were the Accordans so preoccupied with resource efficiency, rather than in building up their manufacturing and technical infrastructure as quickly as possible?
That also scarcely sounded like a colony planning revolt, especially when Mera had pointed out that Accord was attempting to develop the fewest number of mines and mineral extraction sites and was investigating “other” extraction processes.
The young Ecolitan could have been lying, but Jimjoy didn’t think so.
“Other?”
“Biological. You’ll have to get that from the research fellows. They can lead you through the details, Major.”
Jimjoy paid more attention to the outside surroundings again as the groundcar began to slow. He could see a break in the hillside ahead and to the right, as well as a green triangle perched upon a wooden pole beside the road, and set perhaps two meters above the level of the smooth road surface.
“We here?”
“Another few minutes once we leave the Grand Highway.”
“Grand Highway? Thought it was the Ridge Corridor.”
“We’re not quite so prone to take Imperial terminology literally. Besides, what else would you call it?”
Although he shrugged at the young woman’s cavalier references to a great engineering feat, he was a little surprised at her flippant tone with him. Her feelings he could understand. The highway might be a great engineering wonder, but it didn’t exactly appear to be necessary. He decided to push further.
“The Grand Fiasco?”
“Not totally. It does make coast-to-coast surface cargo traffic both practical and economic, so long as you don’t have to factor in the amortization of the construction costs, which we don’t.”
Jimjoy kept his jaw in place. The driver, young as she appeared, had been educated in more than mere ecology, that was certain.
“Economics, yet?”
“If you can’t make something economical, its ecology or engineering doesn’t matter. Except for something like the Grand Highway.”
Jimjoy agreed silently—with reservations—and braced himself when the groundcar slowed as it took the banked curve through the narrow cut in the hill. The steeply sloped sides of the exit road were covered with vegetation, a sure sign that the exit road postdated the highway.
The much narrower road they now traveled did not follow the imperious straight-line example of the Engineers’ masterpiece, but arced around the more imposing hills in wide, sweeping curves, gradually descending.
“How far?”
“Another five kays. Just around that last curve and downhill from there.”
Although he saw one short and low stone wall, Jimjoy noted the general absence offences, as well as a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar flora. He saw no animals.
“Animals?”
“The Institute research farm is farther west. Most native animals are nocturnal, those that the Engineers left.” While her voice was carefully neutral, that neutrality provided a clear contrast to her previous tone.
“I take it the Institute has questioned the Engineers’ policy of limiting local fauna?”
“That was before our time, and there’s not too much we can do about it, except to modify things to fill in the gaps.”
“Gaps?”
“Ecological gaps. If you need a predator, one will evolve. In the meantime, you discover something else overpopulates its range, usually with negative consequences.
“Here we have the additional problem of fitting in Terran flora and fauna necessary for our own food chain. We don’t need as much as the Imperial Engineers calculated. But they always thought bigger was better.”
Jimjoy listened, but concentrated more on his surroundings as they presumably neared the Institute.
No power lines, often common on developing planets, marred the landscape. Nor did he detect any overt air pollution, not even any smoke plumes. No glints of metal or rusted hunks of discarded machines.
The bluish-tinged trees with the angular leaves had a well-tended look. Interspersed with the native trees he could see Terran-style evergreens, but nothing which looked like T-type deciduous stock.
The Accord-built road, although narrower than the Grand Highway and curving, appeared equally smooth, without a sign of patching or buckling.
“How active is Accord? Geological
ly?”
“Slightly less than Terra, but the geologists claim that the current era is the most stable in several eons. And a geologic disaster is waiting in a decaying orbit.”
“When does the disaster begin?”
“I understand we have somewhere between twenty thousand and fifty thousand years local.”
Jimjoy caught just a glimmer of a smile as she answered his last question.
Mera had slowed the groundcar evenly as they neared the next curve. Jimjoy tensed, wondering if he were about to be ambushed or whether they were merely nearing their destination.
As the car decelerated to slightly faster than a quick walk, it came around a wide curve and through two cylindrical pillars, one on each side of the road. Each rose five meters and was topped with a bronze triangle set inside a dark metal circle. The dark gray stones were set so tightly that the joints were hairline cracks. No mortar was visible.
Below, in a circular valley, stood the Institute. The placement of the low buildings, the muted greens and browns, and the symmetry of the landscaping all stated that the valley housed an institute. Beyond the buildings, the ground rose to a lake, then to a series of small hills that flanked the lake before climbing into a series of foothills, then into low mountains nearly as high as those whose flanks had been scored by the Grand Highway of the Imperial Engineers.
“Impressive.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. Very powerful.”
“Powerful?”
Jimjoy nodded before speaking. “Tremendous sense of power, of knowledge, of purpose. Especially purpose.”
“So that’s why you’re here.”
“I’m not sure I know why I’m here myself, young lady. Would you care to explain?”
“I shouldn’t have spoken out.”
“No reason to stop now, and besides, your thoughts won’t doom either one of us.”
The driver laughed lightly, uneasily. “No.” Her voice turned more serious. “Not this time. I suppose I do owe you some explanation.” She did not look back at him as she let the groundcar roll down the curving drive toward a circular building at the front of the Institute. “Most visitors make some comment about how rustic the Institute is, or how isolated, or how beautiful. All that’s true, but it’s not why we’re here. You’re the first I know of who instinctively saw—really saw—it as it is.”
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