Space Buggy

More about Space Buggy

Beyond the Seventh Spiral, where the ordinary charts began to lose confidence, the
old road ran straight across three hundred thousand miles of nothing and then bent
sharply around a planet that was not there.

No one had repaired that curve in twelve centuries, yet every fifth year a crew
arrived, replaced the blue markers, tested the rail-lights, filed the required report,
and departed without discovering who had ordered the work. The original authority
had vanished before the first colonies of the Inner Reach learned to write, but its seal
still opened the maintenance lockers. Such things were common in that region.

There were tunnels whose entrances remained fixed but whose exits migrated with
the season. There were stations built around black stones that predated their suns
and could not be moved, though nobody remembered why anyone had wanted
stations there. One platform, abandoned for ten thousand years, illuminated itself
each evening at what had once been dusk, even though its star had gone dark.

Maps helped, provided they were treated with discretion. The most accurate chart of
the Amber Routes had been copied from a fragment found inside a ceramic sphere
orbiting a dead moon. It showed twenty-six roads, four of which had never been
located and two of which appeared only when the map was folded incorrectly.
Mariners distrusted the printed edition because the publisher had corrected the
creases.

Tolls were more reliable. The gate at Morrow’s Crossing still accepted silver
crescents minted by an empire extinct for eight thousand years, and rejected every
known substitute. Merchants therefore carried purses of archaeological currency
purchased at considerable expense from museums that officially denied selling it. No
one knew where the money went. Once each century, the gate returned one coin,
newly polished.

Cargo regulations were simpler. Sealed consignments from the western depots bore
a red triangle and the instruction NOT TO BE OPENED IN TRANSIT. Nobody
opened them in transit. Once, after lawful arrival, a customs clerk opened one and
found a second customs office inside, staffed, furnished, and demanding to know
why the parcel was late. The incident produced several useful revisions to the code.

The old roads themselves were stranger than anything built upon them. Some had
been laid by known peoples, some by peoples known only from their tools, and
some by no civilization willing to admit responsibility. They crossed empty gulfs,
skirted worlds, entered luminous meshes that resembled woven light, and emerged
where distance had apparently reconsidered its obligations. A journey of four days
might require three weeks on the return passage. Certain routes grew shorter in
winter. One road had been closed for repairs for so long that two new constellations
appeared while the detour signs remained in place. Still, the lights worked, which
troubled philosophers more than travelers.

Along the White Thread, damaged sections repaired themselves in the night. No
crew had ever been observed. Broken markers stood upright by morning, their bolts
replaced with metals unknown to local industry. Once, inspectors removed a
damaged span entirely and stored it under guard. By dawn the road was whole
again and the missing section had vanished from the warehouse. The report blamed
inventory error. Older travelers claimed the road had always possessed better
maintenance than the governments responsible for it; the governments, in turn,
denied responsibility with admirable consistency.

There were moons whose shadows fell toward stars that had not yet formed, and a
small red planet visible from twelve unrelated systems, always low on the horizon,
always at the same apparent distance, and never present when anyone attempted to
approach it. Children accepted these things readily; adults devised terms.

They spoke of folded distance, inherited geometry, transit memory, residual
sovereignty, migratory mass, nonlocal weather, and other dignified phrases which
allowed meetings to proceed on schedule. None explained why a roadside beacon
on the Old Meridian sang every eighty-three years in a language no living throat
could pronounce, or why the song was invariably answered from somewhere beyond
the mapped universe. The answer came faintly, but always on time.

Yet roads remained open, cargo moved, tolls were paid, stations lit themselves at
dusk, and maps grew steadily thicker with warnings. By the time darkness settled
over the cloud-banks below the Seventh Spiral, the blue markers had begun to glow.
Ahead, the great mesh-tunnel brightened ring by ring, its woven walls opening onto
a destination the current charts described only as PROBABLE.

The route notice advised reduced speed.

Someone had recently repainted the sign.