"But why are we now off the road?" John asked.
Yuri shrugged. "We all saw that road crew spin up a new cylinder."
John nodded. "Of course. It's still under construction."
"We're on a detour," Susan put in.
"Very good, Susan," Yuri said, smiling.
John's brow knitted and he put a long-fingered hand to one side of his face, massaging it. "So confusing," he muttered. "See here. You just said that the Skyway doesn't go anywhere. But we've just spent a month on Red Limit Freeway. I don't know where in God's name we're going, but we're surely going somewhere, and it bloody well seems to me that Red Limit Freeway was built for the express purpose of taking us there."
Yuri sat forward and propped his chin up on his fists, his eyebrows twitching perplexedly. "Yes," he said. "Yes, it does seem that way, doesn't it? You're absolutely right, John, and I have to confess that it undermines my theory." He sat up sharply and pounded a fist into his thigh. "But dammit, if the Roadbuilders wanted people to be following a prescribed path, why the devil didn't they make that path abundantly clear? Why the blind alleys, the cul-de-sacs, the obscurity, the whole tangled mess of it all?" As he spoke, the accumulated frustration and stress of the past two years and the boredom and uncertainty of the past four weeks rose from whatever place it is where such things cook and stew under pressure until they have to be released. "Dammit all, I've spent half my life trying to understand one basic thing, trying to find some sort of clue, struggling to shed a single ray of light on a single overriding question and it's been like butting and butting my head against the roadbed itself. Sometimes I think I've been a fool―but that's of little importance. It was my choice―I made it and I must live with it. But the question still remains, dammit. It won't go away." He crashed a fist into the armrest, his voice erupting to a shout. "If the goddamn fucking Roadbuilders had wanted us to follow their fucking road―' He began pounding the armrest in cadence. "―why the bloody fucking HELL didn't they give us a fucking MAP!"
The last thwack on the armrest nearly broke it.
After a pregnant pause, Sam began to laugh. And that set us all off.
Yuri looked around at us, his eyes wide. Then he collapsed inside, spent, the redness in his face quickly turning from anger to embarrassment. He fell back in his seat in total helplessness and started to laugh, too.
We spent at least two full minutes laughing ourselves silly.
We began sobering up when we realized that Yuri had dovetailed into crying. Zoya got up, stood behind him, and began massaging his shoulders, stroking his tousled hair.
Yuri wiped his eyes on his filthy, tattered sleeve. "Forgive me," he said, his voice choked with remorse. "My friends… you must… forgive me."
"Nothing to forgive, Yuri," I said. "You were entitled to that, and it was just about time you collected."
"Still, I must apologize for the outburst…" He managed a smile. "And the language."
"You won't find any virgin ears around here," Susan said, "so don't worry about that." She thought a moment. "Of course, I've never tried it that way."
This set us off again and this time Yuri's laugh was unadulterated mirth.
When we had sobered up again, Sean got up from the deck, straightened his black turtleneck, and thumped his stomach, which had become drastically reduced in the last few weeks.
"I'm for grub," he said. "What there is of it left, anyway. What do you say, me hearties?"
"None for me," Zoya said. "Maybe a drink of water."
"Zoyishka, you're wasting away," Yuri said.
"Good for the soul."
"Not so good for the body, Zoya," I said. "You should eat. Come on, we're not on starvation rations yet."
She shrugged, then looked at me and relented. "You're right, I should. It's just that my appetite seems to have disappeared. And when I do eat, my digestion is frightful. There's some pain."
"What about Winnie?" Roland broke in.
The non sequitur brought everyone up short. Carl asked, "What did you say, Roland?"
"What about Winnie's map―and George's? Isn't it clear by now that they were planted? Maybe there are other races, other borderline-sapient animals who have map knowledge. Thousands, millions of species seeded along the Skyway like that. It all fits." He ground fist into palm, his lips pursed. He seemed to be off somewhere on his own magic carpet of thought. "It all fits."
Yuri was willing to plod back to the previous conversational sequence. "Yes, that's a distinct possibility, and in fact that's been one of the operating assumptions of our investigation into the matter. But it's also manifestly clear that Winnie and George's so-called knowledge is anything but reliable."
"Yeah," I said, "which brings us back to square one. So quit grinding your teeth, Roland, and relax. It's a safe bet we're not going to get to the bottom of this for some time."
Roland seemed miffed. "I wasn't grinding my teeth."
"Just an expression." I reached back and slapped his knee "Take it easy. Okay?"
He unwound a bit and smiled a little sheepishly. "Sure Sorry."
"It's okay."
"I have an announcement," Sam put in.
"Let's have it," I told him.
"We've just gone superluminal."
"What's that?" Susan said.
"Fancy for 'faster than light'."
Yuri and Zoya exchanged glances. Then a slow, world-weary smile of capitulation spread over Yuri's face. "Well, we knew the Roadbugs had superscience. Now we know they have magic."
"Sam, are you sure?"
"Hell, no. I'm not equipped to analyze data like these, but I'm damned if I can explain this crazy stuff any other way. Do you see any stars out there?"
I looked. Blank space. "Wow. No, I don't."
"I watched them disappear, but they didn't just disappear, they dopplered right off the scale."
"What's he saying, Jake?" John asked.
"I have an inkling, maybe."
"I can't really explain it," Sam said. "I don't have the wherewithal to put it into easily understandable terms. Not really in my programming. I can give you figures, but you wouldn't want 'em."
"Sam," I said, "this radiation. I was wondering about that. Even at lightspeed, we'd be smacking into stray hydrogen atoms with terrific energy. It'd fry us. What kind of count are you reading?"
"I'm not getting any high-energy particles, but I'm tracking very high frequency photons, about one per second. Which is nothing, really, in terms of health hazard."
"You say you're tracking them at faster-than-light speeds?"
"No, no, no, of course not. Light that's faster than light? The situation isn't that crazy yet. What I am saying is that these little buggers used to be starlight."
"Oh."
"Here's my hunch. We have just crossed the lightspeed barrier. No hyperspace, no fifth dimension', none of that horse nonsense. We are simply going faster than light."
"Oh," I said again, not knowing what else to add.
Susan was befuddled. "Hey, isn't that supposed to be impossible?"
We all looked at her.
"Just trying to be helpful," she said lamely.
"Let's eat," I said.
Our space journey lasted three days. We spent the time pretty much as we had done up till then, eating, sleeping, attending to personal matters, playing cards, playing chess (Sam took us all on in a marathon session―he won hands down against all comers. "It's not me, it's just my game files," he said modestly), reading, gabbing, although that tapered off after a while. We had hashed over everything of moment and were running out of small-talk material. We'd decided not to trade life stories. Carl was still reticent on the subject of Everybody-Knew-What, but he said he was working on it.