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Glades and fields and patches of forest ran down to a placid blue sea. The
ditch was blocked off by a wall. Beyond the wall, it divided into twin
channels, which descended in a series of steps until they opened into the sea.
"Incredible," said Flojian. "They walked the ships down."
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The wall, on closer inspection, turned out to be a pair of gates, topped by a
catwalk. It was a place to cross.
The river roared past. They gazed at the torrent and, following the faithful
Shay, turned upstream.
The fury of the watercourse filled the afternoon, throwing up a mist that
soaked people and animals. It had carved out a gorge and became, as they
proceeded south, still more violent. Toward sunset, a remnant of sidewalk
appeared along the lip of the gorge and a sound like thunder rolled downriver.
The walls of the gorge grew steeper, and the sidewalk skirted its edge for
about a mile before taking them past a collection of ruined buildings.
It also took them to the source of the thunder. A little more than a mile
ahead, a great white curtain of mist partially obscured, but could not hide, a
waterfall of spectacular dimensions. The river, tens of thousands of tons of
it, roared over a V-shaped precipice.
They knew it at once. The sixth sketch. Nyagra.
The walkway curved off toward the ruins. They left it, and continued along the
edge of the gorge, ascending gradually to the summit of the falls. Spray and
mist filled the air, and soon they were drenched. But the majesty of the
falling water overwhelmed trivial concerns; here all complaints seemed
innocuous, and they looked down from the heights laughing and exhilarated. It
was still early afternoon, but they decided they deserved a holiday, and so
they took it. They withdrew far enough to find dry shelter while retaining a
view of the spectacle, and pitched camp.
"Incredible," Quait said. "How would you describe this to people?"
Flojian nodded. "Carved by the hand of the Goddess. What a beautiful place."
He was looking down toward the distant gorge and the ruined buildings below
the falls. "That's strange," he said.
"What is?" asked Chaka.
"That must have been an observation complex. But why's it so far away?
They could have put it a lot closer, and provided a magnificent view." Indeed,
beyond the point where the ruins lay, only hedge and shrubbery lined the
river.
There had been more than enough room.
"Don't know," she said.
Flojian wondered if someone had owned the land and had simply refused
permission.
It occurred to no one that the waterfall was on the move. It was wearing away
its rock carapace at about three feet per year, and since the days of the
Roadmakers, it had retreated the better part of a mile.
The falls threw up a lot of mist, and in fact considerably more than it would
have when the observation platform was in regular use. The central sections of
the horseshoe came under most pressure, and therefore were giving way more
quickly than the wings of the cataract, elongating the area in which the
falling streams were in violent competition. The absolute clarity of the
American falls, and the misty coyness of the Canadian, no longer existed. The
spectacle was almost lost in its own shrouds.
The sky was full of stars that evening, and there was a bright moon. While
Flojian slept, Quait and Chaka approached the cataract and looked down into
the
basin. Mist and moonlight swirled, and Quait had a sense of shifting
realities.
Chaka looked particularly lovely against that silvery backdrop. "If I were
going to move into the woods, like Jon," she said, "I'd want to live here."
The mist felt cool on their faces. "It's the most spectacular place I've ever
seen," said Quait. A brisk wind blew downriver. His arm was around her, and
she moved closer.
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Chaka was by no means the first woman to stir his emotions profoundly. But
there was something about her, and the stars, and the waterfall, that lent a
sense of permanence to the embrace. There would never be a time when he would
be unable to call up the sound and sights of this night. "It's a moment we'll
have forever," he told her.
Her cheek lay against his, and she was warm and yielding ;n his arms. "It is
very nice here," she said.
"It means you'll never be able to get rid of me. No matter what."
She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes dark and unreadable. Then she
stood on her toes and brushed her lips against his. It was less a kiss than an
invitation.
She was wearing a woolen shirt under her buckskin jacket. He released the
snaps on the jacket, opened it and pulled her dose. "I love you too, Chaka,"
he said.
She murmured something he could not hear and inserted her body against his,
fitting part to part. "And I love you, _ Quait."
He set aside his stern moral background; he was deliriously conscious of her
breathing and her lips, her throat and eyes, and the willingness with which
she leaned into him. He caressed the nape of her neck.
She pulled his face close and kissed him very hard. Quait touched her breast
and felt the nipple already erect beneath the linen. They stood together for
some minutes, enjoying each other. But Quait was careful to go no farther.
Although he ached to take her, the penalties for surrendering virtue were
high. Not least among them were the consequences of a pregnancy on the trail,
far from home.
But our night will come.
23
South of the falls, the Nyagra divided into two channels, creating an island
about five miles long. The companions crossed the western channel on a wobbly
plank bridge of uncertain, but relatively recent, origin. Although it was now
in a state of general disrepair and could in no way match Roadmaker
engineering, the bridge was nevertheless no mean feat of its own, spanning a
half-mile of rapids.
"Sometimes," Flojian said, "I think we tend to underestimate everyone who
followed the Roadmakers. We behave as if nothing substantive happened after
they died off."
They arrived on the north end of the island, where Road-maker dwellings were
numerous, as were ruins from a less remote period. Quait thought they were
Baranji, the barbarian empire whose western expansion had reached the
Mississippi four centuries earlier. Flojian was doubtful. Baranji architecture
tended to be blockish, heavy, utilitarian. Designed for the ages, as if the
imperials had been impressed by the permanence of Roadmaker building and had
striven to go them one better. These structures were not quite so solid as one
would expect from the Baranji, but if the density was missing, the gloom and
lack of imagination were there. Quait wondered whether this had not been an
imperial outpost either at the beginning or at the end of their great days.
Shortly after their arrival, they encountered a mystery that turned their
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