Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt Page A

anything? He lost everybody. Maybe his mind went.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Can you conceive of any sequence of events that would lead him to keep such a discovery secret?”
    “No,” said Silas. “Which is why I think the Mark Twain has nothing to do with Haven.” Quait’s gray eyes had grown relentless. There was a quality in this man that the boy had not possessed. “Look, Quait, if they found Haven, don’t you think he’d have brought back more than one book?”
    “But why did he keep it quiet? If you found something like that, Silas, would you not mention it to someone?”
    “I’d tell the world,” Silas said.
    “As would I. As would any rational person.” He speared a piece of white meat and examined it absent-mindedly. “Are we sure there are no more of these things lying around?”
    The wine was good. Silas drank deep, let its taste linger on his tongue. “I’ve invited Flojian to look for more.”
    “Who’s Flojian?”
    “His son.”
    “Silas—” Quait shook his head. “If I were his son, and I found, say, a Shakespearean collection, I’d burn it.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I was his son. If there’s anything there, Karik was hiding it for a reason. I’d honor that reason.”
    “Flojian didn’t like him very much.”
    “It doesn’t matter. He’ll protect his father’s name. It’s too late to come forward with new finds. Look at the way we’re reacting to the Mark Twain. It smells too much of conspiracy.”
    Silas thought it over. “I think you’re wrong. If he felt that protective, he wouldn’t have turned the Mark Twain over to Chaka.”
    “Maybe he hadn’t put things together,” said Quait. “He might have needed you to do that for him. Now he knows his father’s reputation, such as it is, is at stake. Has it occurred to you he might have murdered the others?”
    Silas laughed. “No, it hasn’t. That’s out of the question.”
    “You’re sure.”
    “I’m sure. I knew the man.”
    “Maybe something happened out there. Maybe he thought he could keep everything for himself.”
    “Quait, you’ve been chasing too many bandits.”
    “Maybe. But I’ll guarantee you, Flojian’s search won’t turn up anything.”
    Silas finished off the last of his roast chicken. “Well,” he said, “Flojian’s going to be out of town for a couple of days. We could consider burglary.”
     
    The culture that had developed in the valley of the Mississippi was male-dominated. Women were treated with courtly respect, but were traditionally relegated to domestic chores. The major professions, save the clergy, were closed to them. They could own, but not transmit, property. The villa granted to Chaka Milana by her younger brother, Sauk, would revert to him in the event of either her marriage or her death.
    That Chaka remained unattached in her twenty-fifth year led many of her acquaintances to suspect she was more interested in retaining her home than in establishing a family. Chaka herself wondered about the truth of the charge.
    Her father, Tarbul, had been a farmer and (like everyone in the tumultuous times before the League) a soldier. He’d returned from one campaign with a beautiful young captive who was repatriated after the war, and whom he later courted and won. This was Lia of Masandik, a merchant’s daughter, and a born revolutionary. “High-spirited,” Tarbul had said of her.
    Lia had been appalled by the arbitrary chaos of constant warfare, mostly brought on, she thought, by male idiocy. She had consequently invested heavily in the education of all her children, determined to give them the best possible chance at independence. This was not a strategy with which her husband had concurred, but he was interested enough in keeping the peace to avoid opposing his determined wife. Ironically, his firstborn, Arin, showed little aptitude for the farm or for the hunting expeditions that were the lifeblood of the father’s existence. The boy was given to art and debate