Mark pulled on his overalls, and started running diagnostics on the first machine. Its magnetic drive bearings were shot to hell. He was still underneath examining the superconductor linkages when his garage sales assistant, Olivia, came in.
“Have you heard?” she asked excitedly.
Mark propelled his flat trolley out from under the mud-caked autopicker and gave her a wounded look. “Wolfram finally asked if he could come in for a coffee last night?” It was a saga of frustrated romance that had been playing out for two weeks now; Mark usually got the latest installment each morning.
“No! The Second Chance is back. They came out of hyperspace above Anshun about forty minutes ago.”
“Goddamn! Really?” Mark couldn’t possibly pretend lack of interest in that. If he hadn’t been married with family responsibilities he would have applied to go on the voyage himself. It was all part of the more interesting universe that existed away from Augusta. As it was he’d hunted down a lot of information on the project until he was able to bore plenty of people with all the statistics and trivial factoids. His e-butler was supposed to alert him on all new developments connected with the flight, but while he was driving into town that morning he’d put a blocker on his e-butler’s access to the cybersphere to avoid any more emergency calls like that from Tea For Two. Family could get through, but no one else. He’d forgotten to take it off when he reached the garage. “What did they find?” he asked as he hurriedly removed the blocker.
“It’s gone, or something.”
“What has?” The data began to line up inside his virtual vision.
“The barrier. It vanished when they started to examine it.”
“Holy cow.” His virtual hands started to flash over icons, bringing up information. In the end there was so much coming on-line they went into the little office at the back of the salesroom to watch the images on a holographic portal. CST was releasing video segments of the exploration as the starship downloaded its data. The media companies were gleefully swooping on it, putting together their own analysis and commentary teams in the studio.
Olivia had been right, the barrier was no more. Its disappearance was shocking, affecting him like the news of a sudden death in the family; that was one thing he absolutely hadn’t been expecting. Nor had any of the studio experts, judging by the way they struggled to make sense of it.
There was little traffic on the road outside the Ables garage. The Russian chocolate house opposite had the same images playing in their portals above the counter. Customers sat at the tables, drinks ignored as they stared at the incomprehensively massive barrier. He called Liz to see if she was accessing. She said yes, she was sitting with the rest of the staff at the Dunbavand vine nursery where she worked, looking at the scenes on one of the office screens.
Mark watched, awestruck, as the spheres and rings of the Dark Fortress revolved within the portal on his desk. The scale was so hard to appreciate. Then there was the system-wide Dyson civilization. The safe thrill of watching the nuclear firefight between ships made him feel as if he were doing something illicit. None of the commentators Alessandra Baron brought into her studio liked the implications of the battle. She turned to a cultural anthropologist to try to explain why a space-faring species would fight in such a fashion. He clearly didn’t have a clue.
Hours passed without Mark really being aware of them. It was only when Olivia said, “Time for my lunch break,” that he finally glanced around at her, frowning as he tried to work out what she was saying.
“Right. Sure,” he replied. “I don’t suppose anyone’s going to buy a vehicle off us today.” He decided he ought to take a break himself, and shut the garage doors behind him. The promenade was unusually quiet for midday. He pulled up his jacket hood against the bitter wind blowing off the lake. Those who did stroll past had the glazed otherwhere expression symptomatic of someone absorbed by their virtual vision. Everybody was hooked on the starship’s return. It was as momentous as the Cup final, when all through the first half Brazil had actually looked like they were going to lose. Instinctively he glanced up at the Black House where Simon Rand lived, wondering if he, too, was having life put into perspective on this day. The building was a huge Georgian mansion perched on the slope above the eastern wing of the lake’s inlet, set in ten acres of its own immaculately maintained grounds. There were dozens of big houses arrayed on the slopes around it, the most expensive and exclusive in the town, though they didn’t match its grandeur. A lot of them belonged to the first arrivals, the men and women who’d joined Simon’s quixotic crusade and helped lay the highway through the mountains.
It was fifty-five years ago now when Simon Rand arrived at Elan’s planetary station with a whole train loaded with JCB roadbuilders, a fleet of various bots, and trucks jammed full of civil construction systems. He was moderately rich even back then, a first-life son of a minor Earth Grand Family who had cashed in his trust fund to buy a dream. Inspired by legends of the Oregon Trail he was determined to set out for somewhere fresh and new, and protect it from modern desecration. Elan, opened to settlers for only a couple of decades back then, was a good starting point. Developers and investors were cut a lot of slack by the planetary government if they helped establish new neighborhoods and facilities. The idea was such entrepreneurial folk would import entire factories and build housing around them. But Simon’s very different vision of a clean green community was harmless enough, so the bureaucrats granted him his land licenses while privately believing the venture was doomed. After all, the Confederation worlds were littered with the follies of eccentric romanticists and their lost fortunes.
Simon immediately set off for the almost uninhabited southern continent of Ryceel. Once there he began the ultimate foolishness of building his road through the imposing Dau’sing range—as if there wasn’t plenty of open land available north of the mountains. Several news shows ran derisive reports on their bulletins, which attracted other idealists and supporters to his cause, willing to get their hands dirty for the payday of living in a quiet, off-mainstream community when they were finished. And Simon, for all his quirky attitude, had at least prepared for his venture with a pragmatic thoroughness.
Three years and seven hundred eighty kilometers later his last surviving JCB monster roadbuilder chewed its way around the base of Blackwater Crag amid the death-screeches of disintegrating rock and churning clouds of filthy steam like some earthbound dragon. Behind it was a dual carriageway of enzyme-bonded concrete that bridged seventeen rivers and tunneled through eleven mountains. Walking along the newly-laid surface that crackled and gave of reeking urealike fumes was Simon, leading a chaotic caravan of mobile homes, trucks, and even a few horses and mules pulling carts. The three other roadbuilders that had begun the trip were now abandoned behind them; cannibalized, rusting hulks slumped beside the road as monuments to its conception.
Like Moses so long before him Simon gazed out across Lake Trine’ba and said, “This is where we belong.” He could see that it was the cool blue water that had parted the continent-spanning mountains, leaving their massed ranks pressed together along its shores. The massive ramparts stretched on and on into the distance, reflected perfectly by the unsullied mirror surface. On both sides, hundreds of waterfalls fed by the meltwater poured out over jagged cliffs, from tiny silver trickles barely wetting the rock to great foaming cascades throwing out spray thicker than rain. Tiny, delicate scarlet and lavender coral cones were poking out from the center of the lake. And filling the huge gulf of air above the water was a silence so deep it absorbed his very thoughts.