Eternity Road

by Jack McDevitt

  One, titled Dragon, showed a set of glowing eyes set above a dark forest. Another, dated the following day, depicted a spectral city apparently afloat in a misty sea. It was close to sunset, and enormous dark towers rose in the gathering gloom. This was The City.

  “Even for the Roadmakers,” she said, “It looks incredible.”

  He nodded and returned to the preceding sketch. “If we can believe this,” he said, “It’s guarded by a dragon.”

  She shrugged. “It does look like it.”

  “Wasn’t this supposed to be a literal record?”

  “I would have thought so.”

  The shop bell rang. Chaka got to her feet and went off to take care of a customer. When she came back, Silas was once again poring over the book. “I wonder,” he said, “if you’d trust me with this for a while?”

  “Yes,” she said. “If the library would make a copy for me.”

  “Of course. That will be easy to arrange.” She could see he was relieved. “Would you want me to take it now? Tonight?”

  “Please,” she said.

  He smiled, closed and rewrapped the book.

  “Not that I don’t trust you,” she said. “But I wonder if you could give me a receipt?”

  “Of course.” There were several stacks of paper sheets on the table. She gave him a bottle of ink and took a pen down from a shelf. He wrote:

  JANUARY 4, 306

  THE IMPERIUM

  RECEIVED OF CHAKA MILANA ON THIS DATE THE ONLY EXTANT COPY OF A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT. TO BE RETURNED ON DEMAND.

  (SIGNED)

  SILAS GLOTE

  “Thank you,” she said. “And I’ve got one other question for you.”

  Silas picked up the book and cradled it. “Yes?”

  “Where do you suppose he got it?”

  3

  Silas should have been delighted with the find. He kept the book in his bedroom that night, leafing through it and reading passages aloud until the first gray streaks appeared in the sky. But he could not shake a sense of foreboding. Karik’s footprints had made it clear he’d walked into the river. Drowned himself.

  Now there was this strange business of the book.

  Why had he kept such a secret?

  In the morning Silas reluctantly turned the book over to the library. In a society that lacks the printing press, a library is necessarily a facility whose primary concern is security. Users are permitted access to books only under close supervision, and nobody ever takes one home.

  The custodians thanked him effusively, gushed and burbled as he must have to Chaka Milana the previous evening. The Director came out and assured Silas that the board would not forget his services, and they were all still poring over the volume when he left.

  His morning was free and he was still too excited to sleep, so he paid a second visit to Flojian, finding him at his waterfront shipping dock. He was supervising a half-dozen workmen who were constructing a new ferry. He wore a yellow cotton shirt and gray workpants. “They don’t get anything right unless you watch them every minute,” he told Silas. “When we started this business, you could trust people to do an honest day’s work for a day’s pay.” He squinted, shook his head, and sighed. “What can I do for you?”

  The ferry was going to be a large double-deck barge. When finished, it would use sail, poles, and a bank of oarsmen to cross the river to Westlok. After unloading, it would be hauled upstream by a team of horses to a dock almost two miles north of its east bank point of departure. There it would reload and begin its return voyage cross-river.

  Silas expressed his admiration for the vessel, and switched quickly to the subject at hand. “Flojian, I can’t imagine why your father never told anyone about the Mark Twain.”

  “Let’s go inside,” said Flojian. He led the way into a battered cubicle piled high with ledgers, and pointed Silas to a chair. “When he showed it to me, I pleaded with him to make it public. For one thing, it would have gone a long way to restoring his reputation.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said no. Then he said the only reason he was showing it to me was to make sure I understood the bequest: that the book was to be given to the woman, no questions asked.”

  “Which means that he wanted it out, but he didn’t want to do it himself.”

  “Didn’t want it done during his lifetime, I’d say.”

  “But why?”

  Flojian shrugged. “Wish I knew.” There was pain in his eyes. “It hurts to have been locked out like that. I was his son, Silas. I never did anything to cause him grief. Or to give him reason not to trust me.” He looked tired. “Look, I thought I’d find out what was going on in due time. Just be patient and wait for him to tell me. It never occurred to me he was getting ready to take his life.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe I could have helped if he’d said something.”

  They were seated in worn but comfortable fabric chairs, looking at each other across a table. Silas pressed his fingers against his temples. “Was there anything unusual in the anuma?” he asked.

  “No. Just personal items. Clothes, his pen, his hourglass. Things like that.”

  “No map?”

  “No.”

  “No journal? Notebooks? Diary? Records of any kind?”

  “No. Just mundane stuff.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Flojian hesitated. His eyes glanced momentarily away. “I’m sure. I packed it myself.”

  Silas looked at him.

  Flojian squirmed. “Okay. There was a copy of something purporting to be The Notebooks of Showron Voyager. But it was a fake.”

  Silas felt a rush of despair. “And you burned it?” Showron was the Baranji scholar who, according to tradition, had been the last known person to visit Haven. He had spoken with its guardians, had examined some of the manuscripts, had even left sketches. “How do you know it was a fake?” he demanded.

  “Because my father tried to use it to find the place. And he never got there, did he?” He looked at Silas, challenging him to deny the truth of the statement. “Look, don’t you think I know what my father’s reputation is? People think he was a coward because he was the only person to come back. He had to live with that. I had to live with it.” He got up, walked to the window, and stared out at the dock. “It’s no secret I didn’t like him very much. He was tyrannical, self-centered, secretive. He had a short temper, and he didn’t worry unduly about other people’s feelings. You know that.”

  Silas nodded.

  Flojian’s gaze turned inward. “When he came back, he withdrew from me as well as from the world. He sat in his wing of the house and almost never came out. That was his territory. Okay. I learned to live with it. But I’d be less than honest, Silas, if I didn’t admit that his death has lifted a lot of weight from my shoulders.” He took a deep breath. “I’m glad he’s gone. But I don’t care what anybody says: He wouldn’t have abandoned anyone.”

  A long silence drew itself around them. “I agree,” said Silas at last. “But that doesn’t explain where the Connecticut Yankee came from. Have you noticed anything unusual around the house?”

  “Unusual in what way?”

  Damn the man. Was he, after all, naturally obtuse? Or was he hiding something? “Anything that might tell us where he got it. For all we know, there might even be other stuff hidden somewhere.”

  Flojian’s mouth hardened. “There are no other unaccounted-for books.”

  Silas wanted to point out that the Mark Twain was a major find, that there was a serious enigma here, and that a hundred years from now people would still be trying to understand what happened. We’re close to it, so we ought to get some answers. But he knew it would sound ridiculous in Flojian’s ears.

  “I tell you what,” Flojian said. “I’m leaving this afternoon for Masandik. I’ll be back in a couple of days. When I return, I’ll look through my father’s things. If there’s anything there, I’ll let you know.”
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  Quait Esterhok was a senator’s son. Years ago, he had been one of Silas’s prime students. He’d been blessed with a good intellect and an enthusiasm for scholarship that suggested great potential as a researcher. Silas had hoped he would stay with the Imperium, and had even persuaded the board to offer a position. But Quait, pressured by his father, had declined and instead accepted a military commission.

  That was six years ago. Quait had returned from time to time, had sat in on a few seminars, and had even treated his old master to dinner occasionally. It was consequently no surprise when Silas found a note from him in his mail, and the man himself waiting in a nearby pub favored by the faculty.

  The boyish features had hardened somewhat, and Silas saw at once that he’d acquired a new level of self-assurance. Quait rose from a corner stall as he entered, smiled broadly, and embraced him. “Master Silas,” he said, “it’s good to see you again.”

  They wandered over to the cookery and collected slices of roast chicken and corn, called for a bottle of wine, and fell to reminiscing. Quait talked about the changes in the military that had come with the foundation of the League. “Everyone does not profit from peace,” he laughed. The wine flowed freely, and Silas was feeling quite ebullient when his companion surprised him by putting down the chicken leg he’d been chewing and asking what he knew about the Mark Twain.

  “You know about that?” asked Silas.

  “I think the whole world knows by now. Is it true?”

  “Yes,” he said. “As far as I can judge.”

  Quait bent over the table so they could not be overheard, although the loud conversation around them all but precluded that possibility. “Where did he find it? Do you know?”

  “No. No one seems to know.”

  “Isn’t that strange? Where could he possibly have got it?”

  Silas shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “I had a thought.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “It occurred to me that Karik might have found what he was looking for.”

  The possibility had occurred to Silas. But it raised even bigger questions. If Karik Endine had found Haven, he could have deflected much of the disgrace that had settled about his name. “I don’t see how it could be,” he said.

  “You mean, why he didn’t say anything? He lost everybody. Maybe his mind went.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Can you conceive of any sequence of events that would lead him to keep such a discovery secret?”

  “No,” said Silas. “Which is why I think the Mark Twain has nothing to do with Haven.” Quait’s gray eyes had grown relentless. There was a quality in this man that the boy had not possessed. “Look, Quait, if they found Haven, don’t you think he’d have brought back more than one book?”

  “But why did he keep it quiet? If you found something like that, Silas, would you not mention it to someone?”

  “I’d tell the world,” Silas said.

  “As would I. As would any rational person.” He speared a piece of white meat and examined it absent-mindedly. “Are we sure there are no more of these things lying around?”

  The wine was good. Silas drank deep, let its taste linger on his tongue. “I’ve invited Flojian to look for more.”

  “Who’s Flojian?”

  “His son.”

  “Silas—” Quait shook his head. “If I were his son, and I found, say, a Shakespearean collection, I’d burn it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was his son. If there’s anything there, Karik was hiding it for a reason. I’d honor that reason.”

  “Flojian didn’t like him very much.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’ll protect his father’s name. It’s too late to come forward with new finds. Look at the way we’re reacting to the Mark Twain. It smells too much of conspiracy.”

  Silas thought it over. “I think you’re wrong. If he felt that protective, he wouldn’t have turned the Mark Twain over to Chaka.”

  “Maybe he hadn’t put things together,” said Quait. “He might have needed you to do that for him. Now he knows his father’s reputation, such as it is, is at stake. Has it occurred to you he might have murdered the others?”

  Silas laughed. “No, it hasn’t. That’s out of the question.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m sure. I knew the man.”

  “Maybe something happened out there. Maybe he thought he could keep everything for himself.”

  “Quait, you’ve been chasing too many bandits.”

  “Maybe. But I’ll guarantee you, Flojian’s search won’t turn up anything.”

  Silas finished off the last of his roast chicken. “Well,” he said, “Flojian’s going to be out of town for a couple of days. We could consider burglary.”

  The culture that had developed in the valley of the Mississippi was male-dominated. Women were treated with courtly respect, but were traditionally relegated to domestic chores. The major professions, save the clergy, were closed to them. They could own, but not transmit, property. The villa granted to Chaka Milana by her younger brother, Sauk, would revert to him in the event of either her marriage or her death.

  That Chaka remained unattached in her twenty-fifth year led many of her acquaintances to suspect she was more interested in retaining her home than in establishing a family. Chaka herself wondered about the truth of the charge.

  Her father, Tarbul, had been a farmer and (like everyone in the tumultuous times before the League) a soldier. He’d returned from one campaign with a beautiful young captive who was repatriated after the war, and whom he later courted and won. This was Lia of Masandik, a merchant’s daughter, and a born revolutionary. “High-spirited,” Tarbul had said of her.

  Lia had been appalled by the arbitrary chaos of constant warfare, mostly brought on, she thought, by male idiocy. She had consequently invested heavily in the education of all her children, determined to give them the best possible chance at independence. This was not a strategy with which her husband had concurred, but he was interested enough in keeping the peace to avoid opposing his determined wife. Ironically, his firstborn, Arin, showed little aptitude for the farm or for the hunting expeditions that were the lifeblood of the father’s existence. The boy was given to art and debate and draughts. Not the sort of qualities to make a father proud.

  In the end it had been Chaka who’d joined her father in the hunt, and who managed the farm in his absence. On one memorable occasion, during a raid by a Makar force, she had led the defense. “Your mother would have been proud of you,” he’d told her. It was the ultimate compliment.

  Lia had died after contracting a virulent illness as Chaka approached adolescence. Her father was killed seven years later in a gunfight with poachers. The farm went to Sauk, while she moved eventually to the villa and established a living as a silversmith and jewelry designer.

  Chaka wanted a family. She wanted a good spouse, a man who could engage her emotions, whose spirit she would be pleased to pass on to her children. But she simply hadn’t found anyone like that yet. And, living in a society in which most girls were married by seventeen, she was beginning to feel a sense of urgency. And of fear. Although she would not admit it to herself, this was why Raney was now prominent in her life. She was, at long last, prepared to settle.

  The sundial at the foot of Calagua Hill registered the third afternoon hour. Chaka took time to wander through the bazaar.

  She had no competitors among the city jewelry shops, who appealed to those customers who were primarily interested in economy and glitter. Chaka had established her reputation as an artist, from whom one could either buy fine pieces off the shelf, or have them custom made. Nevertheless, she knew the people who ran the other businesses and enjoyed spending time with them. So she whiled away an afternoon that seemed strangely restless. Toward the end of the day she stopped by the library and basked in the admiration and gratitude that Connecticut Yankee generated. She was delighted to discover she’d
acquired a considerable degree of celebrity.

  Silas came in while she was there. He was in a jovial mood and joked about how he and a former student had considered burglarizing Flojian’s place. “He’s out of town, and the militia could go through the house without waking up Toko,” he said. Still, at sundown, she returned to Piper, her mount, feeling out of sorts. This should have been a good time for her, a time to celebrate her fortune. Yet she had never felt more alone.

  Raney was waiting at the west gate.

  He looked good on a horse, far more graceful than one would normally expect from a shopkeeper. He was handsome, and she did not want to let him get away. He was reasonably intelligent, he treated her well, and he would be a good provider. Furthermore, Chaka lived in a society which tended to dismiss romantic notions as so much petty nonsense. Marriage was for procreation and mutual support and economic stability. Her father had summed up this philosophy when he realized she was imbibing some of her mother’s ill-advised notions. Marry a friend, and preferably a friend with means, he had said. You cannot do better than that. He would have approved heartily of Raney.

  “I think you’re right about the book,” she said, as they rode out of the city. “Eventually, I’ll sell it. For now, I’ve turned it over to the Senatorial Library for safekeeping.”

  “Good.” His congenial features showed that he agreed completely with this common-sense decision. “Take your time with it, find out what it’ll bring, and get the best price you can. Having the library put it on display’s a smart idea. That can’t hurt.” He grinned. It was a good smile, warm and genuine, the smile of a man at peace with the world. His soft blue eyes were almost feminine. They lingered on her, and expressed more clearly than words ever could his devotion to her. He’d proposed marriage several weeks ago, and she had put him off, told him she was not ready. She’d expected he would sulk or withdraw, but to her surprise he’d laughed and told her she was worth waiting for and he would be patient. “I’ll try again,” he’d assured her.