The Road That Stops

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Renn Ordel arrived before sunrise carrying a tray of tea and no camera.

Iria had expected a representative of the supply works to speak to Eren first. Instead Renn asked Tavi which of the containers would survive a journey without depositing hot tea on the gear lever. Tavi chose a flask, and the trays were emptied into it while the town's first bakery opened across the road.

Renn wore the orange jacket of the intake's field staff. There was a dark mark on one cuff which looked like grease. She checked the truck's passenger list, then asked whether anyone had questions about what the company was paying for.

"Acoustic examination of the tower," Iria said. "Not an announcement that we've found a lost city."

"Good. I have a room full of people announcing things. What I need is a route assessment and an account of any structures which affect the survey."

Eren was fastening the rear gate. He pulled the catch twice although it had already closed.

"Your colleague recorded the tones during an intake survey," Iria said. "Why so far west?"

"We're comparing old drainage descriptions with the present basin. Some of the channels are buried. Some were never channels. Jun came back with the photograph and refused to classify the stonework from one visit."

Renn looked toward the paling edge of the desert. A line of construction lights marked the eastern works. Beyond them lay the towns which the new supply system was meant to serve. Iria had seen the water queues beside the railway. The project was not an abstract blue line to the people standing in them.

"If there's something out there we haven't understood," Renn said, "I'd prefer to hear about it before we start moving water."

She gave Eren a radio schedule and gave Laila a second copy. Then she helped lift a crate onto the truck. Her departure contained no speech about courage. The company vehicle simply turned east, toward the lights.

They left Namar Gate as the bakery's first customer stepped outside with bread under one arm. Ada passed pieces through the cab. Iria burned her fingers on a crust and watched the familiar roofs slide below the rear window. For the first time since signing, she understood that she was actually going.

The road carried them between abandoned loading platforms, a belt of thorn trees and the last low buildings. The desert beyond was not an uninterrupted field of sand. Gravel lay in long dark fans. Pale ridges exposed their ribs. Here and there a green stain showed where runoff had once gathered. Laila drove as if every surface could tell her something, provided the passengers stopped trying to tell her something else.

Iria sat between her and Tavi. Eren and Ada followed in the shorter white support vehicle, whose roof rack held the camp gear. At a bend, the white truck disappeared in a fold of land. A moment later its voice came over the radio, dry and ordinary, confirming that nothing had happened to it.

Iria had packed her headphones within reach. She did not put them on. Laila's attention moved between mirrors, road and the colour of the ground ahead. It seemed discourteous to pretend that a journey could be undertaken from inside a recording.

At the end of the paved road, a board announced an improvement scheme completed nine years earlier. The improvement consisted of a raised earth track which ran north beneath a line of old utility poles. On Eren's route printout, the track continued past South Ear.

On the ground, a broad wash had cut through it.

Laila stopped well short of the edge. Tavi was out before Iria had unfastened her belt. The wash was dry, its floor a shallow tangle of gravel and pale branches. Across it, the track resumed at the same height. Iria could see tyre marks on a sloping section to their right.

"Somebody got through," she said.

"Somebody got down," Laila replied.

The white truck drew up behind them. Eren came forward with the printout, saw the break and folded the paper in half. He did not try to argue with the missing road. Iria was grateful for that until she realised how low a standard gratitude could become.

They walked along the wash. At the tyre marks, the far bank rose in a crumbly step. Laila crouched without touching it. Tavi pointed to a groove on the opposite side, where something heavy had scraped rock.

"Trailer," he said. "Or a driver with an expensive idea about ground clearance."

The route card offered another crossing several kilometres east. Using it would cost most of the morning and bring them back toward the utility line from the other side. Eren asked whether they should send the lighter vehicle first at the nearer crossing, without the trailer.

Laila stood. "And if it cannot climb out, we have moved our support vehicle into a hole."

Iria looked again at the tracks. The marks which had seemed to her a single successful passage were several attempts, ending against the bank. Beyond them, the gravel was unbroken.

She said so. Laila nodded once and returned to the truck.

They took the eastern crossing. Nobody applauded the decision. The detour shook Iria against the seat, filled a fold of her scarf with grit and made her stomach regret the warm bread. By the time they rejoined the track, the sun had burned the last cool colour from the ground.

Then the green truck began to rattle.

The sound was faint at first, a repeated tap beneath Tavi's feet. He stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence. Laila slowed, listened, and pulled onto firm ground where both vehicles could stand clear of the track.

Iria reached for her recorder. Tavi caught the movement.

"You could hold the light instead."

She put the recorder away.

The repair was not a transformation accomplished by three clever blows of a spanner. One of the protective fixings had worked loose, and its movement had damaged the adjoining mount. Tavi had the replacement piece. Reaching the awkward fastening took much longer than identifying it. He worked with his shoulders wedged against the ground while Laila held the panel. Iria kept the beam where he asked for it, discovering how much concentration an apparently simple duty required.

When her arm shook, Ada took over without comment. They ate in the vehicles' small scraps of shade. Eren asked Tavi whether the damage was connected to the bracket replaced the previous evening.

"Different mount," Tavi said. "Same lesson. A part can be new and its neighbour can be old."

Iria thought of three clean tones rising out of a recording crowded with untidy noises. She had spent years learning to separate a wanted signal from everything around it. Out here, she was beginning to suspect that the things around it might refuse to remain background.

They reached the low stone tower late in the afternoon.

South Ear was smaller than the photograph had made it seem. Its broken top stood no higher than the roof of a two-storey house. The low arch at its base was half filled with sand. Wind moved past it without producing anything Iria could distinguish from wind.

Eren wanted her to start immediately. Laila wanted the vehicles positioned and the camp established before the light went. Ada had already begun unloading the shelter. Iria looked from the empty arch to the people carrying their sleeping arrangements across the gravel.

"The tower isn't leaving," she said.

Eren watched her for a moment, then took the other end of Ada's load.

Later, with the camp secured and the scheduled radio call made, Iria walked a short distance beyond the tower. The low sun dragged every mark into relief. Around the base lay the shallow prints of Jun's survey party, blurred by wind. Beyond them, another set of vehicle tracks bent west and vanished behind a ridge.

She called Laila over. Laila studied them, then asked Tavi whether Jun's truck had pulled a trailer. He checked the photograph on Iria's screen.

"No trailer."

There were three wheel lines in the sand: the broad pair of a vehicle and the narrow intermittent bite of something following it. Near one turn, a small yellow tie lay caught on a stone.

Eren arrived carrying his mug. He looked at the tie longer than he looked at the tracks.

"Do you recognise it?" Iria asked.

"It may be a survey marker."

"That wasn't my question."

The wind lifted sand across the nearest prints. Eren put his mug down carefully, although there was nothing fragile about either the mug or the ground.

"I think," he said, "that Cale Dorr has got here before us."