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.”