Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road (v1) [rtf]

by Emily

  "After a while the land on the east closed in and we saw that Endine was right and we were in a bay or channel. Whatever it was, it kept getting narrower. The first night, we made anchor near the eastern side and went ashore. We'd been setting watches since the shooting incident and I had the two-hour shift from midnight. Endine was awake the whole time, sitting on a rock down at the waterline. I asked him if he was okay, and he didn't even hear me until I poked him.

  "The sea's loud up there. It's a constant roar. In the mom-ing we went down to the beach, and the Mindar, which had been anchored in twenty feet of water, was high and dry. The tide was out. Way out.

  "Endine was furious. The captain had been on board, had seen it happening, and had tried to get clear but he wasn't quick enough. Wouldn't have mattered anyhow, because we were stranded on the beach. You understand, Chaka, we were just riverboat sailors. Nobody knew anything about those waters. The captain tried to explain, but Endine called him all kinds of an idiot, in front of everybody. I'll never forget it. Later his people apologized. But Captain Dolbur had a long memory for things like that.

  "When the tide turned, it came back pretty quick. I mean this wasn't like any tide any of us had seen before. The channel just swelled up and roared in. We were afloat again by mid-morning. There was some confusion in the currents, and we had trouble at first making way, but once we got back out into the channel we moved north like a son of a bitch. The farther we got, the narrower the channel got; and the narrower the channel got, the faster we went.

  "That was rough country, wild, mountainous, not many signs there'd ever been towns. But we saw a few, ruins cen­tered around harbors, and sometimes sitting up on rocky shelves or in prime locations along the coast. A couple of roads. Bridges crossing coastal rivers.

  "Toward the end of that second day, the channel split in two. After some uncertainty, Endine directed us to starboard. Later that afternoon we sighted a cape sticking out from the eastern shore, and our passengers got excited.

  "They had a map with them, and they consulted it and looked a long time at the cape as we rounded it. It was obvious they were hot on the trail now. The map was out every few minutes, and they were taking bearings on passing mountains and rivers and whatnot.

  "They found what they were looking for: The coast on both sides was lined with escarpments and bluffs. They zeroed in on one of the bluffs on the eastern shore. It was pretty ordinary-

  looking, a sheer wall rising about two hundred feet out of the water. We could see thick woods at the top."

  Chaka removed the sketch marked Haven from her vest. *Is this it?" she asked.

  Knobby looked at it. "Yeah," he said. 'That's it.

  "There was a river on the north side of the bluff, and a peb­bled beach. They looked at their map some more, took bearings on a turn in the channel and a saddle-shaped formation off to the west. That was it, they said. No question. And they cheered and clapped one another on the shoulder and broke out some liquor. Endine actually looked friendly. In fact, he shook hands with everyone in sight, including the crew. And everybody got handed a drink.

  "We looked for a place to drop anchor. The water was low again, the tide running out, and we planned to be a little more cautious this time. Which meant that we would leave the boat in the middle of the channel and the crew would stay on board except for me. My job was to get Endine and his people to the beach, stay with them until the tide turned next morning, and then return to the Mindar, after which somebody else would go in and take my place.

  "The sun had been down two hours by the time we arrived] on shore. They jumped out as soon as we hit land and took off.! They were like a pack of kids. I couldn't believe it. Just ran off] into the dark. Me, I stayed with the dinghy.

  "They came back about midnight, unhappy, and I knew] things hadn't gone well.

  "Tori explained they were looking for a catwalk or a cage! on the face of the precipice. When I asked what would be the! point of a catwalk up there, he just looked up at the cliff. "Tram] station/ he said, and laughed." Knobby's eyes locked o*| Chaka. "You know what a train is, right?

  "They used steam engines. Just like the Mindar. But I'm botched if I can figure out how one of them would run acro» the front of that precipice.

  "They bunked down to wait for daylight. I don't think anf of them slept much. They were up again before dawn, stayed! for breakfast only at Endine's insistence, got their geal

  together, and walked down to the water's edge, where they could get the best possible look at the cliff. They weren't find­ing what they were looking for. Endine sputtered and stalked back and forth and finally threw up his hands and walked over to where I was standing. 'The dinghy,' he said.

  "We'd beached it at high tide, and it was a long way from the water now. But we dragged it out through the mud and got it launched. The others jumped in. Take us across the face of the wall,' he directed. 'About a quarter-mile out.'

  "I don't know if I mentioned this, but the dinghy didn't have an engine. Right? It was sails and oars, which is okay when you're moving around in a river. But not so good in those tides.

  "I didn't like it much but I took them. They were saying things like, 'It's got to be there,' and, 'Well, I damn sure don't see it."

  "'Your train station is missing?" I asked Tori.

  "He said it was.

  "Now / laughed. I'm not surprised," I said.

  "'Well, Knobby," he said, "there might still be something there to indicate where there might have been a structure. Maybe even a pattern of shrubs." He said that if a platform or station had been mounted on the rock face, holes would have been drilled. If somebody drills holes, they eventually fill up with dirt. And the dirt sprouts shrubs. It sounded thin to me but I was damned if one of them didn't think he saw it right away. And somebody else said how there was a piece of discol­ored rock. That I could make out, although it still didn't seem like much.

  "They were satisfied that was what they wanted, so I took them back in and they disappeared into the woods. They went around to the rear of the bluff, where the ascent was more or less gradual. I saw them again as they came out along the sum­mit.

  "They crossed to the edge of the precipice and threw a rope ladder over. Then somebody climbed down to the discolored stone. They were too far away for me to be sure who it was, but I had to admire them. I remember thinking how they'd

  never get me to hang out over that damned thing. Which shows you, you never know.

  "The discolored stone was about fifty feet down. They needed a second climber, and the two of them worked on it for about an hour. Then a door opened up and I could see a pas­sageway. The climbers went inside and the others started down the ladder.

  "After they were all inside I waved a green flag at the boat, which told the captain they'd been successful. A little while later the tide turned and started running out. I went back to the Mindar. One of the guys we'd just hired on climbed down as soon as I was out of the dinghy and took it back in. His name was Leap, and I don't remember whether that was a first or last name. Leap was big, grinned a lot, and always had a kind of silly look on his face. He also scared easy.

  "Leap was on the beach for six or seven hours and there wasn't any sign of anybody coming back out of the door in the cliff. So he went up to the summit and called down and didn't get an answer. He got nervous. Leap was one of those people who never went near Roadmaker ruins, which I think is a smart idea. Especially now. We didn't have a pre-set signal arranged that covered the situation, so he came back to the beach and waved his arms until the captain signaled for him to return to the Mindar. He explained that nobody was answering from inside, that maybe they couldn't hear him, but that he thought maybe something had happened.

  "The captain and me and one of the other hands got some: lamps and got in the dinghy and we took Leap and rowed back j in to shore. There was still no sign of anyone. We went into the j woods and walked around to the back side and climbed up to the summit. It wasn't a hard climb but it
was time-consuming. | Getting up there took the better part of an hour. Of course, the captain wasn't young even then, so he wasn't in very good shape and he had some interesting things to say about Endine.

  "The woods up there grew right over the summit. We knew that, so we took it easy because you couldn't see more than a few feet in the shrubbery. But when we got to the edge, we could see where they'd been. And the rope ladder still hung j

  down. It was tied to & tamarack tree. The captain leaned over the face of the cliff and called Endine's name.

  "Nothing.

  "He looked at me and looked at the rope ladder and I knew what he was thinking. He didn't like the height and he didn't like going into a ruin. But he didn't have much choice, and he couldn't very well ask anyone else to climb down until he'd done it. So he grabbed hold of the ladder and pulled on it to make sure it was secure.

  "He told me to follow him and was about to start when I remembered how Endine's people had done it. "Wait," I said. They'd run a safety line to one of the branches. We tied it around his waist. "Don't take it off till you're inside," I told him. He laughed and started hand over hand down the ladder. Pretty soon he was out of sight.

  "A couple minutes later I saw that the safety line was free so I hauled it up and looped it around my belt and went after him. The cliff bulged a little at the top so you had to hang a few feet out from the rock. Down where the door was, they'd secured the lad­der with two ringbolts, which made it easy to just step off into the passageway, if you could forget where you were. The captain was waiting for me, but there was no sign of anybody else."

  Chaka ordered more wine. "What did it look like in there?"

  "Stone walls. Just like you'd expect inside a mountain. A lot of dust. Plenty of footprints. The passageway was about a hundred feet long. It was wide enough to have put the Mindar into it. And it was probably twenty feet high. There was a stair­way leading down, folding back on itself every ten feet or so until it disappeared into the dark.

  "The passageway was broken up by openings along both walls. The daylight didn't come much past the door and our lamps didn't help much. I was about to stick my head into the first opening when the captain pulled me back because there was no floor.

  "We looked down and it was just a gaping hole. A shaft."

  "How deep?" asked Chaka.

  "Couldn't see bottom. All the doors on both sides opened into shafts. There was also a cross corridor.

  "We called Endine's name again. Still no answer. Lots of echo but no answer.

  "The footprints went down the stairway. None came back up." Knobby shook his head. "I think if it were up to me, that would have been the end of the search. I'd've gone back up the ladder and waited for a while and if they didn't come, I'd've left. Know what I mean? But the captain figured he had an obligation. So he took the lamp and led the way. We started down.

  "Every floor looked the same: The shafts opened onto each level, and there was the cross passageway beyond. Karik and his people had gone off several times to inspect the area, but the prints showed us they'd always come back and continued down the stairs. We looked in some of the rooms beyond the shafts. They were just rooms, a lot of different sizes. Filled with junk. Chairs and tables and beds that must have been a thou­sand years old. Some had baths. But everything was under a layer of dust.

  "Every few minutes we'd stop and call their names. But we got no answers and I have to tell you, my skin began to crawl. I mean, how big could the place be that they couldn't hear us?

  "Captain Dolbur said he doubted they were still in there. After aU, it had been hours since I'd seen them climb through the door. The place was damp and cold and absolutely silent. They found another exit," he said. I mean, this was a place where, without the lamps, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. And it felt dosed-in. Nobody was going to stay long.

  "Then we heard Endine."

  "We didn't know at first it was him. Just a sing-song whine somewhere below us.

  "He was sitting hunched up on a landing, his hands wrapped around his knees, rocking back and forth. He was bone white and his eyes looked crazy and his hair was matted with blood. There were books stacked in neat piles. Maybe forty or more. One pile was knocked over.

  "The captain tried to talk to him, but it was like we weren't there. He just kept swaying and making this dying sound in his throat.

  "The staircase broke away just below the landing. I looked down into a chamber but saw no one, although there were more books down there, scattered around. They'd strung up a line to climb down. I called out a few names but the only thing that came back was echoes.

  "The captain joined me. "He got hit in the head's all," he said. "Other than that, I don't see anything wrong with him."

  "He leaned out over the stairwell to look down into the lower chamber, breathed my name, and delivered an expletive. There was a body down there.

  "The lower chamber was a pretty good drop, maybe twenty-five feet. There were knots in the line to make climbing easier. I held the lamp while the captain went down, and then I joined him. It was Shay.

  "The body was wet. It was crumpled up and had a washed-out look. But there was nothing to indicate what had killed him."

  "No wounds?" asked Chaka.

  "A couple of bruises. That's all.

  "The walls were damp. There were even some puddles. I should mention, there were four exits from the chamber. There was a long, high corridor leading off opposite sides at right angles to the passageway with the shafts. And a fourth short passage led to an underground lake.

  "The tall corridor was lined with doors and they were all open. Except one. We looked in the rooms. They were all there, everybody, some in one place, some in another." Knobby sat staring at a point in space somewhere over her shoulder.

  "They were all dead?"

  "Yes."

  "How? What killed them?"

  "I don't know. They were just like Shay."

  "What did Endine say?"

  "Not much of anything. He never made sense, that I heard of. The captain didn't think he ever really came out of the delirium. We brought him back here and tried to turn him over to the surgery. But we heard he was out and gone the same night we brought him in. Just took off." Knobby sucked in air and refilled his cup again.

  "Did you look in the room that wasn 't open?"

  "We tried. But the door wouldn't give. On the other hand, to be honest, we didn't try hard." He looked at his wine. "This stuff's not strong enough. Anyway, I heard rumors later he was seen west of Brockett. But I never heard any more about him. Till now."

  "And you never found out what happened?"

  "No. We told the story around. People laughed. Blamed us. Some thought we were trying to hide something. Some even thought we murdered the whole bunch. But it was a demon. I mean, how do you kill a half-dozen people without leaving a mark on them?"

  "What happened to the bodies?"

  "We buried them. We brought the bodies out and buried them." He looked carefully at her. "With honors," he added.

  "Thank you."

  The waiter came with a fresh carafe and filled both cups. "Could they have been drowned?"

  Knobby shook his head. "Hard to see how."

  "You talked about tides. And you said there's an under­ground lake."

  "No tide is going to come up so fast that you can't get away from it."

  Chaka felt a chill edging down her back. Her food lay half finished on her plate. "What about the books?" she asked. "What happened to them? The ones on the landing—?"

  "We took them back to the Mindar. The captain thought they were probably valuable, so we took everything."

  "Did you happen to notice what they were?"

  "I'm not good at reading, Chaka," he said. "I'm not sure. The captain mentioned some titles. War and Peace was one of them. And Don Somebody-or-Other. Bleak House. Something called Commentaries on the Constitution." He made a face as if thinking about it required a major effort. "That's
all I can remember. It mean anything to you?"

  "A little. What happened to them? After you got back to the Mindar?"

  "Vtc threw them nverhoard."

  "Who? Who threw them overboard?"

  "Endine. He came out on deck one day and chucked them all into the water. Every last one of them."

  Chaka's spirits sank. "You're not serious."

  "After all the trouble we went to. I could have tossed him into the water. But yes, that's exactly what happened. He brought them out on deck in piles. And he threw them over the side. One by one."

  Chaka stared at him. "You're sure? You saw this happen yourself?"

  "Yes, I'm sure. We all stood there and watched him."

  She listened to people talking around them. Someone's father was threatening to cut off an inheritance. "He didn't destroy them all," Chaka said. "He got back home with a Mark Twain."

  Knobby shrugged. "Well. All I know is he got rid of a lot of them."

  "You said the bodies, all except Shay's, were found in the rooms? Not in the corridor?"

  "Yes. The rooms. They were big rooms. Bigger than this place. And two stories high."

  "What was in them? The rooms?"

  "Just books. And some Roadmaker junk. Lot of those gray boxes you find everywhere."

  "Books?" She came alive. "Where are they now?"

  "Where are what?"

  "The books. The other stuff."

  "Still there, I suppose."

  "You left it?" Chaka couldn't believe her good fortune.

  He shrugged. "Yeah. Why wouldn't we? They wouldn't have been worth anything to anybody. They were in pretty bad shape."

  "Why?"

  "It was damp down there. Wet. Everything was soaked."

  Chaka squeezed her cup until Knobby gently disengaged her hand. "Easy," he said. "You'll hurt yourself."