After the encounter in the grotto, Chaka became more prone to investigate sites that aroused her interest. It may have been that she began to view the quest differently. The value of the expedition, in her mind, would no longer hinge exclusively on whether she learned what had happened to Arin, and to the other members of the first mission. Nor even to whether they found the semi-mythical fortress at the end of the road. In a sense this was also an expedition into time, a foray into an elusive past. They had already seen marvels that exceeded what she would have considered the bounds of the possible. What else lay waiting in the quiet countryside?
I think it’s a flying machine,” said Flojian.
The object vaguely resembled a giant iron bird. It had a sleek main body flanked by a pair of cylinders, and crosspieces that looked like wings, and spread tails. It was in the middle of a forest, one of nineteen lined up four abreast, five deep, except for one column in which the foremost was missing. There was no single one among the group that had not been crushed and folded by the trees. One had even been lifted completely off the ground. Nevertheless, the objects were identical in design. It was easy to see what they had originally looked like.
The crosspiece extended about fifteen feet to either side. It was triangular, wide where it was attached to the central body (just above the flanking cylinders), and narrow at the extremities. A hard, pseudo-glass canopy was fitted atop the main body, near the front. It enclosed a seat and an array of technical devices so complex they looked beyond human comprehension. The forward section flowed into a narrow, needle-shaped rod.
Below the bubble, black letters spelled out the legend:
The main body expanded, flaring toward the rear, encompassing the twin cylinders, which terminated in a pair of blackened nozzles. Four tapered panels, two vertical and two horizontal, formed the tail.
Flojian discovered a concrete pit by stumbling into it, and examination suggested that the entire area, with its legion of artifacts, might once have been enclosed.
Quait climbed onto the frame and looked down into the canopy. “A month ago I’d have said flying machines were impossible,” he said.
But they had been in one. Although these were a different order of conveyance from the maglev.
Quait lifted a panel, pulled on something, and the canopy opened. He exchanged grins with the others and lowered himself into the seat. It was hard and uncomfortable. The various devices seemed ready to hand. He was tempted to push a few buttons. But experience had made him cautious.
It was not only the conversation with Winston that had changed the tone of the mission. The discovery that they possessed, in the wedge, a weapon of considerable power had also done much for their state of mind.
The day after they’d left the grotto, a black bear had attacked Flojian. Flojian had gone instinctively for his gun, but had dropped and then kicked the weapon. The creature got close enough to deliver a blast of hot and torpid breath. Flojian had then produced the only defense he had available: the wedge. Despite the demonstration on the Peacemaker, he hadn’t yet learned to rely on the small, harmless-looking black shell. But it put out the creature’s lights as it might have extinguished a candle. That night they’d feasted.
A group of six armed Tuks also tried their luck, stopping them on the trail and announcing their intention to take the horses, the baggage, and (apparently as an afterthought) Chaka. With the weapon in her palm, she’d felt little other than contempt for the ragged raiders. She listened politely to threats and demands and had then casually put the gunmen to sleep.
A second confrontation had followed a similar script. A dozen horsemen had blocked them front and rear, demanding whatever of value the travelers were carrying. But the numbers didn’t seem to matter. On this occasion, the companions responded by holding out their arms in a gesture of despair, with their hands curled over the wedges. They left it to Chaka to synchronize the attack by simply telling the bandits that they looked tired and probably needed some rest. The effect was both exhilarating and awe-inspiring. The horsemen and their animals collapsed simultaneously.
It gave the travelers a sense of near-invulnerability, which Quait warned could get them killed.
But no one slept well that night. And when Chaka woke out of a troubled dream she saw Flojian hunched over the fire.
She got up and joined him. He continued to stare at the flames.
“Avila,” she said.
He nodded. “It needn’t have happened.”
If they’d taken the wedges seriously. If they’d all carried them, as Avila had.
“It’s done,” she said. His jaw worked and he wiped his eyes.
Word might have gone ahead. During the next ten days they encountered more groups of Tuks, but the meetings were amicable, and there were even invitations to visit Tuk settlements. They accepted on several occasions and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Spring seemed finally to have arrived, and festivals were in full swing. The food was good, but they were careful not to drink too much. In the spirit of the season, the entertainment was generally erotic. Chaka enjoyed watching Quait pretend to rise above it all, and she was pleased to see that Flojian actually seemed to enjoy himself at the spectacles, although he refused the use of Tuk women when they were offered. Remembering advice he’d got from Shannon, he was careful to plead illness on these occasions rather than risk offending his hosts.
Quait, who divulged his relationship with Chaka, received no offer.
The Tuks pretended not to notice the security precaution behind the insistence of the three that they sleep under the same roof. They nodded knowingly at Chaka, suggesting they enjoyed the presence of a woman who liked her men two at a time. “We are men of the world here,” one Ganji reminded her seriously. “We understand these things.”
The Tuks knew the Ki of Hauberg. He was a despot, they said, who ruled one of several naval powers along the shores of the Inland Sea. They also knew the Peacemaker, and were glad to hear of its demise. “Slave ship and raider,” they said. “The cities are all vile places. They steal from one another, make war on one another, and band together only to pillage us. You were lucky to escape.”
For several days it rained constantly. Sometimes they plodded on through the downpour. If a shelter was available, they used it.
They watched thunderstorms from the interiors of a courthouse and a theater, speculating about the ancient dramas played out at the two sites. “Murder and treason at both,” suggested Quait, reflecting an Illyrian tendency to think of the Roadmakers in grandiloquent and sometimes apocalyptic terms.
“More likely murder and treason on stage,” said Flojian, ‘and wife-beating and petty theft before the bench. Their criminals were probably just like ours, cheap pickpockets and bullies.” The general view of the Roadmakers was that they spent their days executing monumental building projects, and their evenings discussing architecture, mathematics, and geometry. It was known that they had also created a considerable body of literature and music, but because so little of the former and none of the latter had survived, most people now thought of them as bereft of those arts.
“You’ve described this,” Flojian told Chaka as they camped on the stage, “as a voyage in time. I truly wish it was. I would very much like to take a seat up front and watch some of the shows.”
“Maybe,” said Chaka, “if we find what we’re looking for, that’ll become possible.”
It was midmorning; they were following Shay’s signs through the forest, and Chaka was thinking how good it would be to quit for the day and soak her feet in the next spring, when she very nearly walked off the edge of an embankment.
She looked down an angled wall into a steep canyon. The canyon was straight as a rifle barrel and precisely beveled, with concrete walls sloping away at forty-five degrees. The other side was probably four hundred feet away. The bottom appeared to be filled with clay and sparse vegetation.
“Don’t get too close,” Quait said. It was also impassable. “You’re not going to believe this,” she called back to Flojian.
Flojian surveyed the structure and shook his head. Despite everything he’d seen, his idea of a workforce for a major project still consisted of a hundred people with hand tools. How long would it take to dig something like this? And what was its purpose? It was hard to see because of the shrubbery, and when he leaned out too far to get a better look, he lost his balance and Chaka had to haul him back.
The trail, stymied by the obstacle, turned north, moving parallel to the ditch. The trees closed in again. The ditch went on and on, and at sunset there was still no end to it. But there was something else: An iron ship of Roadmaker proportions had come to rest against the far wall.
“That thing is a canal,” said Flojian, staggered. “Or it was.”
“It’s the sketch,” said Chaka, excited. She pulled out her packet, went through them, and produced the one titled The Ship. “I never thought it was that big,” she said.
It was an appropriate vessel for so gargantuan an engineering project. It was probably six hundred feet from bow to stem. It had been coming south when it was abandoned, or ran aground, or whatever. The hull was rusted black. Masts and posts and derricks were snapped and broken; they jabbed into the wall and the woods along the rim.
“How on earth,” asked Chaka, “do you move something like that? I wouldn’t think sails would be adequate. And it doesn’t look as if there’s much provision for sails anyway.”
Quait shook his head. Banks of oarsmen damned well wouldn’t do the job either. Sometimes he thought the laws of physics didn’t apply to Roadmaker technology.
“The same way,” said Flojian, “that you lift a maglev, I imagine.”
It was left to Flojian to point out the bad news: The Ship was dated May 13. The last sketch in the series, Haven, was dated July 25. “When they arrived here,” he said, “they were still ten weeks away.”
They made camp. That night, despite the fact it was a warm evening, they built the fire a little higher than usual.
In the morning, they continued north along the rim without seeing any more grounded ships. At midafternoon they topped a rise and came out of the trees. Glades and fields and patches of forest ran down to a placid blue sea. The ditch was blocked off by a wall. Beyond the wall, it divided into twin channels, which descended in a series of steps until they opened into the sea.
“Incredible,” said Flojian. “They walked the ships down.”
The wall, on closer inspection, turned out to be a pair of gates, topped by a catwalk. It was a place to cross.
The river roared past. They gazed at the torrent and, following the faithful Shay, turned upstream.
The fury of the watercourse filled the afternoon, throwing up a mist that soaked people and animals. It had carved out a gorge and became, as they proceeded south, still more violent. Toward sunset, a remnant of sidewalk appeared along the lip of the gorge and a sound like thunder rolled downriver. The walls of the gorge grew steeper, and the sidewalk skirted its edge for about a mile before taking them past a collection of ruined buildings.
It also took them to the source of the thunder. A little more than a mile ahead, a great white curtain of mist partially obscured, but could not hide, a waterfall of spectacular dimensions. The river, tens of thousands of tons of it, roared over a V-shaped precipice.
They knew it at once. The sixth sketch. Nyagra.
The walkway curved off toward the ruins. They left it, and continued along the edge of the gorge, ascending gradually to the summit of the falls. Spray and mist filled the air, and soon they were drenched. But the majesty of the falling water overwhelmed trivial concerns; here all complaints seemed innocuous, and they looked down from the heights laughing and exhilarated. It was still early afternoon, but they decided they deserved a holiday, and so they took it. They withdrew far enough to find dry shelter while retaining a view of the spectacle, and pitched camp.
“Incredible,” Quait said. “How would you describe this to people?”
Flojian nodded. “Carved by the hand of the Goddess. What a beautiful place.” He was looking down toward the distant gorge and the ruined buildings below the falls. “That’s strange,” he said.
“What is?” asked Chaka.
“That must have been an observation complex. But why’s it so far away? They could have put it a lot closer, and provided a magnificent view.” Indeed, beyond the point where the ruins lay, only hedge and shrubbery lined the river. There had been more than enough room.
“Don’t know,” she said.
Flojian wondered if someone had owned the land and had simply refused permission.
It occurred to no one that the waterfall was on the move. It was wearing away its rock carapace at about three feet per year, and since the days of the Roadmakers, it had retreated the better part of a mile.
The falls threw up a lot of mist, and in fact considerably more than it would have when the observation platform was in regular use. The central sections of the horseshoe came under most pressure, and therefore were giving way more quickly than the wings of the cataract, elongating the area in which the falling streams were in violent competition. The absolute clarity of the American falls, and the misty coyness of the Canadian, no longer existed. The spectacle was almost lost in its own shrouds.
The sky was full of stars that evening, and there was a bright moon. While Flojian slept, Quait and Chaka approached the cataract and looked down into the basin. Mist and moonlight swirled, and Quait had a sense of shifting realities.
Chaka looked particularly lovely against that silvery backdrop. “If I were going to move into the woods, like Jon,” she said, “I’d want to live here.”
The mist felt cool on their faces. “It’s the most spectacular place I’ve ever seen,” said Quait. A brisk wind blew downriver. His arm was around her, and she moved closer.
Chaka was by no means the first woman to stir his emotions profoundly. But there was something about her, and the stars, and the waterfall, that lent a sense of permanence to the embrace. There would never be a time when he would be unable to call up the sound and sights of this night. “It’s a moment we’ll have forever,” he told her.
Her cheek lay against his, and she was warm and yielding in his arms. “It is very nice here,” she said.
“It means you’ll never be able to get rid of me. No matter what.”
She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes dark and unreadable. Then she stood on her toes and brushed her lips against his. It was less a kiss than an invitation.
She was wearing a woolen shirt under her buckskin jacket. He released the snaps on the jacket, opened it and pulled her dose. “I love you too, Chaka,” he said.
She murmured something he could not hear and inserted her body against his, fitting part to part. “And I love you, _ Quait.”
He set aside his stern moral background; he was deliriously conscious of her breathing and her lips, her throat and eyes, and the willingness with which she leaned into him. He caressed the nape of her neck.
She pulled his face close and kissed him very hard. Quait touched her breast and felt the nipple already erect beneath the linen. They stood together for some minutes, enjoying each other. But Quait was careful to go no farther. Although he ached to take her, the penalties for surrendering virtue were high. Not least among them were the consequences of a pregnancy on the trail, far from home.
But our night will come.