Eternity Road

18

The loss of Jon Shannon hit Chaka even harder than Silas’s death had. She had known him when she was a child, and she’d been responsible for bringing him into the effort, but those weren’t the reasons. Rather, there’d been a sense of indestructibility about the man, as if he could not be brought down, as if any enterprise on which he was embarked could not come to a bad end. Now he was gone and his companions were shaken.

Once again, they began to talk about giving it up. But now there were two dead. How did you go back with two dead and explain that you had accomplished nothing?

“That’s true enough,” said Quait. “But we have two women along, and I think our first obligation is to protect them. I vote we turnaround.”

“Forget it,” Chaka said. “If you want to take care of your own hide, say so. But don’t make decisions on my account.”

“Nor mine,” said Avila. She growled her response because she’d been offended, although she too believed that the cost of the mission had now gone too high.

Quait went into a sulk, as if his manhood had been questioned. “Okay,” he said finally. “If you’re willing to go on, then let’s do it. I was only trying to do the right thing.”

And Flojian, who believed he was already fighting a reputation for faintheartedness, took the moral high ground, and insisted that they really had no choice but to go on.

So the decision was made to continue, despite the fact that any one of them, left alone to choose, would have opted to turnback.

By the end of the third day, the towers of the city by the sea were just visible in the light of the setting sun. The companions were moving along the south shore, past heavy dunes. It was country they recognized, country they’d seen from the maglev. Inland, the forest still battled extensive ruins, many of which were charred. Like Memphis. And the city in the swamp. During the final days of the Roadmakers, Alvila suspected, fire had been the last resort against the plague.

Wild dogs began to follow them. When they attacked the horses one evening just after sunset, Avila took advantage of the situation to test one of the wedges.

She’d had to act quickly because Quait and Chaka had shot three of the marauding animals within the first seconds of the attack. This had been enough to send the rest of the pack fleeing, but Avila had aimed a wedge in their general direction and squeezed it. A green lamp had come on and a half-dozen of the creatures had simply collapsed. Afterward, they lay for almost two hours before recovering, one by one, and staggering off into the forest.

“I don’t care,” said Quait. “It’s a pussyfoot weapon. Give me a rifle anytime.”

From that hour forward, Avila was careful to keep one in her pocket at all times.

Flojian was fascinated by the effect, and also curious about the green and red lamps that blinked on during operation. She showed him and Chaka how to use it. “Point this end, and squeeze the shell,” she said.

Chaka tried it that night on a wild turkey. The turkey managed a couple of gobbles before falling over. It was asleep before it hit the ground. They had a good dinner, and the weapon seemed quite effective. But would it work on a man?

Flojian was puzzled, not only by the effect, but by the construction. There didn’t seem to be any way to take the unit apart. “I wonder,” he said, “if we could learn to copy them.”

Flojian had discovered to his pleasure that Avila was a willing listener, and able to talk about more than simply religion. They discussed the weapons at length, and speculated on what sort of force they projected. She listened politely while he outlined various schemes for applying the lessons they were learning. And if she could not entirely conceal her occasional impatience with his pragmatism, she made her arguments seriously and without rancor.

She was a beautiful woman. It was easy to forget that in the dust and grime and forced intimacy of daily travel. Flojian wondered why anyone so lovely would have signed on for the celibate priesthood. The thought made him uncomfortable and he pushed it away.

There had never been a serious passion in Flojian’s life. At least, not for a woman. He’d been married once, but the marriage had been cool and businesslike, a wedding of like-minded individuals. Perhaps she had been too much like Flojian. They’d drifted apart without hard feelings on either side. A civilized marriage and a civilized divorce.

Women were inevitably wanting in one way or another. They had annoying habits, or did not operate on his mental level, or were lacking in social capabilities. He’d long ago recognized that he would not share his life with anyone. His code was very simple: Take care of business, make money, take \our pleasure with those who permit it. And keep a safe distance.

But he could no longer deny that Avila Kap stirred feelings •.hat had lain dormant a long time. Her laughter, her smile, her eyes … It might have been that the two deaths had left him vulnerable to female charms. Or it might have been that it would not have mattered. But he sat deep into the night with her, watching the stars move.

He looked for a sign that she reciprocated his feelings. He suspected that, in her eyes, he was too commercial, too practical, a man with both feet solidly planted. And to make matters literally impossible, she was a half-foot taller than he was. But she was taking him seriously. With this crowd, it was as much as he could reasonably ask.

They were still moving east along the shore when Chaka stopped and pointed out to sea. It was early and the sun had not yet burned off the fog. But they saw something moving through the mist.

Gradually, masts and sails took shape. A schooner, with lanterns strung fore and aft, running parallel to the coast. “And guns,” said Quait. “It’s got guns.”

Voices drifted across the water. And laughter. Then, like a ghost, the vessel slipped away. When the fog lifted, not long after, the horizon was clear.

Shortly before noon they approached a new kind of structure standing alone on an offshore rock. It was unlike anything they’d seen before: a six-sided concrete cylinder several stories high, rising out of the roof of a low building. A few windows looked out of the cylinder. The top was no more than an open frame beneath a metal dome. A deck circled the frame. “I think there must have been glass up there at one time,” said Chaka.

An elevated walkway had once connected it with the shore, but most of the walkway was missing. What remained was a low stone wall, a few broken piles jutting out of rock and sand, and some shorn-off metal. “It looks like something they might have used to signal ships,” said Flojian. “It’s not a bad idea.” Along the Mississippi, they raised and lowered lanterns. He was sufficiently interested that they agreed to climb out across the rocks to inspect the structure.

They got wet but made it safely to the front door. Inside, the floor sagged and the rooms were bare. The moldering furnishings that one usually found in Roadmaker houses were missing. A ladder and a circular stairway rose into the cylinder. The rungs were gone from the ladder, and the stairway was ready to come down. It didn’t matter: There was no pressing reason to go to the top.

They stood for a time on the beach while Chaka sketched the structure into Silas’s journal. There was something peculiarly forlorn about it, cut off and alone, and she tried to capture the effect; but she was not satisfied with the result although everyone else pretended to admire the effort.

The shoreline curved north. A few miles beyond the signal tower, the familiar horizontal stripes began to reappear on trees, directing them up an embankment and onto a road. The road was narrow and overgrown, and almost invisible. Toward the end of the afternoon, it passed over another of the giant highways. Shay’s marks led them down an embankment onto the highway, where they turned northeast.

For two more days, they followed the coast. Then the highway veered east, away from the shore. Although no one said anything, Chaka could sense the disappointment: They had hoped, had believed, this was the body of water that sheltered Haven.

Two days later, they angled around a ruined town whose name was something-Joseph. (The highway sign was badly worn.) The weather became erratic, warm one day, cold the next. The road turned gradually into a jumble of broken concrete, great chunks thrown up or collapsed. They got off and traveled through adjacent fields.

After a while the road sliced away and the signs took them down a hillside into a forest, which was dominated by a type of pine tree they had not seen before. It had thin, red-brown bark and bright green needles. The trunk was about a foot and a half thick, and it ranged up to seventy-five feet tall. There were also exotic birds and plants. It was a new world.

Ruins were less extensive than they had been near the City, but they were not uncommon. There was seldom a day without isolated buildings or half-buried villages. Highway signs indicated towns where only trees and fields existed. They found a farmhouse near a place called Joppa that was in excellent condition, save for a fallen roof in the rear. The damage was not immediately visible, and it would have been easy to believe the owners were still around somewhere. The town of Homer stood almost intact, complete with the Downtown Restaurant, Harry’s Hardware and Auto, and the Colonial Pharmacy.

A church sign advised passersby to get right with the Lord.

In the early morning hours of April 5, Chaka listened to the wind in the trees and the occasional movements of small animals in the surrounding brush. They were beneath a canopy of branches and leaves so thick that neither moon nor stars was visible. The fire was low. It was a warm night, she had the watch, and she was having trouble fighting off sleep.

The best way to stay awake was to get on her feet. She strolled over to a nearby spring and, for the fourth or fifth time, splashed water on her face. Then she checked the horses, which were in a clearing. They’d seen a black bear during the course of the day. The bear had looked at them without interest and rumbled back into the woods. But the creature had frightened the animals and unnerved Chaka. She was thinking about the bear when she heard a sound that did not belong in the forest.

She was uncertain at first what it was, something sharp and precise.

A twig snapping?

She laid one hand on her pistol but left the weapon in the holster.

Where was it coming from? She melted into the trees. It sounded again.

There was something almost rhythmic about it. And metallic.

She needed several minutes to zero in on the source, but she arrived at last in front of a post. It was made of one of the Roadmaker materials that felt like iron but did not corrode. It was three times her height, and was tangled with a sassafras tree.

The post was of a type that was common in Roadmaker ruins. Sometimes it was made of concrete, sometimes of pseudo-metal. But it was usually found near intersections, and it usually contained red, yellow, and green lenses. But this was the first one she’d seen that made noise.

The sounds formed a distinctive predictable pattern. Click. Count to six. Whir. Count to six. Click. Count to thirty and start a new series.

She stood a long time watching it, listening to it. These places are all haunted. At last, she returned to the fireside, where she had no more trouble staying awake.

In the morning, they discovered a brick building buried in the trees. A metal plate identified it as the First Merchants Bank. A cornerstone added:

It was a lovely morning. The woods were damp and the air was filled with the smell of green grass. The First Merchants Bank looked intact.

Flojian, who had an affection for commercial institutions, wanted to look inside. “I’ve never seen one in such good condition,” he said.

The forest overgrew the walls on all sides and pushed in through the main entrance and jammed tight an inner set of revolving glass doors. But they found a window whose frame was loose. Quait almost casually ripped it off.

Flojian looked in, saw a long counter, workstations, writing tables, desks, and chairs. Several rooms and two corridors opened off the lobby. He climbed through and descended onto a dirt-covered floor. He was behind the counter. Each of the workstations had the apparently ubiquitous glass sheet and housing that he had seen at the Devil’s Eye.

Although Illyrians thought of banks purely as money lenders, the concept of a centralized institution coordinating the flow of currency was not completely foreign. Flojian had been in the vanguard arguing for the establishment of a League bank and a common monetary system.

He stood now, visualizing how this bank had worked. Customers lined up at the counter to deposit money, which would be duly credited to their accounts, and interest paid. That same money would be loaned out to other customers, probably in confidence. That meant loan officers would be located in the rooms centering on the lobby. These loans would be used to capitalize individual enterprise, and they would be paid back at a fixed rate from the profits. All very neat, and a much more progressive system than the one he’d been faced with, in which opportunities were often not exploited and growth not achieved simply because funds were not available.

Quait came in behind him.

There were eight positions for cashiers. And there appeared to be a ninth one, facing out, at the point where they’d entered. (He didn’t understand that at all.) Each position was furnished with a workspace and a drawer. He opened one and was delighted to see coins. “Marvelous,” he breathed. “Quait, look at these.”

He picked up one of the larger coins, wiped it off, and held it in the sunlight. It was a quarter-dollar, its name engraved on the reverse, under the likeness of an eagle. He smiled appreciatively at it, slipped it into his pocket, and began to scoop out the others.

“Take as many as you can carry,” he advised Quait. “This place is scary,” said Quait, who seemed not to have heard.

“How do you mean?”

Quait opened another drawer. More coins. And more. Every drawer was filled.

“So what’s your point?” asked Flojian.

“These people left so suddenly, they didn’t even take their money with them. How bad could the Plague have been?”

“Bad, I guess. I really have no idea.”

“Remember what Mike said? They just didn’t come to work one day and he never saw them again. Here, they left their money. If we look in the shops, the merchandise is still there. Or what’s left of it. It’s as if they just walked off the Earth.”

“Listen,” said Flojian, “why don’t we talk about this later? I’m running out of pockets.”

Flojian saw movement. Incredibly, a writing table near the front door rose onto three legs and strode forward into the center of the lobby. His hair rose. It looked like a six-foot-tall drawing board with a tapered head connected to a short pliant neck. Two flexible limbs emerged from beneath the table top, and one of them pointed something that looked like a pipe or nozzle in their direction. “Stop what you are doing,” came a voice from directly overhead. “The police are on their way. Do not move unless directed to do so. Weapons will be used if you do not comply with all instructions.”

Quait swore softly. “Lay down your guns and come around the counter.”

Flojian debated his options and glanced at Quait. Was the nozzle a weapon? A gunfight with a machine that could simply walk over and shoot them did not seem promising. He heard Chaka behind him, in the window, say that she didn’t believe this.

He took his gun cautiously from his holster, laid it on a table, and walked out into the lobby. Where he got the shock of his life.

Several piles of skulls and bones were heaped up on the floor at the base of the counter.

Quait came out behind him and caught his breath.

“We didn’t mean any harm,” Flojian said. “We’re just passing through.”

“Police are en route,” said the overhead voice. “Remain where you are until they arrive.”

“What police?” demanded Quait. “There are no police here.”

“Remain where you are until they arrive or I will use force.”

Flojian looked down at the bones. “Some of these people are still waiting.”

Chaka disappeared from the window.

The table stood about ten feet away, swaying lightly on its tripod frame. But the nozzle, which was pointed at a spot midway between him and Quait, never wavered.

“What do you suggest?” he asked Quait, without taking his eyes off the thing.

“It looks a little rusty. The gun might not work.”

“You want to take the chance?”

“We might have to. It’s going to be a long wait for the police.”

Flojian’s heart was pounding. This was ludicrous. He was being held hostage by a writing table. But he was scared all the same. “How do you know the police are coming?” he asked the ceiling.

No response.

“I’m going to try backing away,” said Quait. He shifted his weight. Moved a foot.

“That’s far enough. Take another step and I will fire on you.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Quait said.

“There won’t be another warning.”

“This is crazy,” said Flojian.

Chaka was back. With a rifle. But before she could begin to

bring it to bear, the nozzle moved past Flojian and he heard a sound like sizzling steak. Chaka screamed and dropped out of sight.

Quait spun on his heel and bolted for the window. The nozzle swung back and the sizzle came again. Quait turned into a ragbag, collided with the counter, and went down in a pile.

Flojian screamed at the table, but the voice came again, cool and unmoved: “Stay where you are until the police arrive.”