The Long Way Is Worth Seeing

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The Verity had a cruise setting and a family setting. The difference was mostly
whether the cabin bothered to hide the velocity. Ella left it on family.

At breakfast they crossed the western ice field at nine hundred kilometers an hour
while Joren argued with his sister over the last apricot pastry. Outside, blue
crevasses opened beneath them like wounds in glass. The car floated six meters
above the surface, smooth as thought, compensators shaving every jolt before it
reached the seats. Their father looked up from his coffee when a pressure ridge rose
ahead. The Verity climbed thirty meters, cleared it, dropped back into the white plain.
Nobody spilled anything.

By ten they were over the mountains. Not over them, exactly. Ella had told the nav to
follow the valleys, so the car went down among them, banking between black peaks
and snow cornices, close enough that the children could see wind peeling powder
from the ridges. Joren pressed his face to the window. His sister told him to move.
He did not.

At noon the world ended in ocean.

The sea below was slate-green and murderous, wind tearing foam from waves taller
than buildings. Ella took them lower. The cabin glass polarized against spray and
glare. A breaker rose like a moving wall, and the Verity skimmed its crest so closely
that the children screamed, then demanded it again. Their father said no. Ella said
absolutely not. The car, which had already calculated the wave geometry thirty
seconds earlier, said nothing.

They ate lunch beside a volcano.

The caldera smoked under a red sky. Lava crawled through black channels and
burst orange where it struck snow. The car hovered at the rim while the table
unfolded from the floor and warmed soup. Sulfur compounds outside would have
scarred lungs in seconds. Inside, Joren complained that his soup was too hot.

By afternoon they had seen forests with silver leaves, a canyon deep enough to hide
weather, herds of six-legged grazers running beneath a thunderstorm, and a cliff city
built by nobody because there was nobody here. Just erosion, mineral bands,
coincidence—and from three kilometers out it still looked inhabited enough to make
everyone quiet.

That was the only time all day they stopped talking.

Then the nav offered the direct route home: forty-eight minutes.

Ella looked at the map. The river route curled south through the red canyons,
doubled back twice, crossed a geothermal basin, and would put them home in two
hours and eleven minutes.

She selected it.

The Verity dropped toward the canyon until red walls filled the windows. The river
flashed blue beneath them. Joren had fallen asleep sideways across the seat, one
shoe off. His sister was photographing the cliffs through half-lidded eyes. Their father
leaned back with both hands around a fresh cup of coffee.

Outside, an unknown world kept trying to be magnificent faster than they could get
tired of it.

Ella slowed down.