Destiny's Road

The rear wheels were getting too close. Tim scrambled ahead of them, hands and knees. The bandit's knife came in range and Tim fished it up.

The rope held until the caravan made camp. Again they released the chugs a wagon at a time, to pull the wagons close.

When the chugs left ibn-Rushd wagon for the sh.o.r.e, one remained behind Tim had never before seen a chug lying down. He went to look.

Its head turned at his touch. Under its cap of sh.e.l.l its eyes were too far apart to see in one direction; but the cap tilted and one eye studied Tim Bednacourt.

There were eight holes in its sh.e.l.l. It was the chug Tim had been hiding behind. Chug armor hadn't evolved to stop bullets.

Joker, Damon, and Rian set down what they were carrying: equipment to repair the harness. "Tim, you did well," Rian said.

"Thanks. Rian, will it die?"

"Yes. It can't feed itself."

"Shoot it?"

She shook her head, and set to work cutting harness.

Damon said, "There's no quick death for a chug. I saw Daddy try once. The brain, it's more a strand than a bulge, and bullets don't turn off its heart for a d.a.m.n hour. It saved your life, Tim, and there's no way to pay back."

"But you saved ours," Rian said.

Tim glowed with the compliment. "I should do things about dinner,"

he said.

On the ninth night Tim Bednacourt stayed up far too late trying to learn the songs the merchants and yutzes sang. Joker was a singer too. Between songs they talked about the fight, and Tim bragged without embarra.s.sment.

He listened when the others spoke. They were talking largely for him, enjoying lecturing the novice.

"This clan, they try to chop the harness on one wagon," Bord'n told him. "Then the rest of the caravan has to go on, but the tail guard stays with them. Maybe we kill some bandits, and maybe we lose a wagon. But this clan's only been here three years."

''So?"

Joker said, "Bandits all start as criminals. They're forced out of wherever they lived. Did something dreadful. People along the Road shy from strangers, so they wind up with each other. If they can steal speckles they can keep going. They don't care who they get it from, caravan, village, each other. Sooner or later they run out. Then they turn stupid. They'll attack anything. Then they die out and a whole new nest of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds has to grow up somewhere else. So whatever they have of techniques, it gets forgotten and then invented again, see?"

Tim saw. He'd had time to think. He didn't ask which among them had learned to shoot p.r.o.ne. He'd watch. He didn't ask about c.o.c.kades, and n.o.body else even referred to them.

He'd never seen the gaudy sprays before today. When did merchants wear those hats? When bandits were expected, sure, and maybe when it rained. Spiral Town had never seen c.o.c.kades, but anyone along the Road would know of them. He'd given himself away again.

He'd been trained, all of the yutzes had been trained to shoot standing up. Rian and Joker shot p.r.o.ne while the yutzes stood to draw fire.

The caravans had been at this a long time.

Lost sleep didn't hamper him the next morning. His body had caught up with the stresses of a caravan chef, and the morning was glorious.

10.

Repair and Maintenance Mankind's wastes have seeded pota.s.sium the length 0f the Crab. Birds and animals 0f Earth can survive on what gets into the plants. But h0~ are the fish surviving?

My research shows that none 0f Destiny's predators have learned to store fat. I believe that they have "learned" to avoid eating Earthlife: those ~h0 djd, starved. F~~h and sh.e.l.lfish evolved on Earth are pota.s.sium-shy, b~t they're competing only with other pota.s.sium-deficient Earthlife!

-Wayne Parnelli, Marine Biology By morning light the caravan a.s.sessed its wounds.

Two men and a woman of Wu wagon, #12, had bullet wounds and were being tended in Doheny wagon. The bandits who attacked Wu wagon had also killed a chug and damaged a wheel haft. The wheel was ruined.

Ibn-Rushd wagon had severed ropes and, again, a hacked wheel. While bread was baked and distributed, the rest of the wagons hooked up their chugs and began to move. Two wagons remained behind with the damaged wagons.

Tim was reluctant to ask. "So, are we being abandoned?" Three yutzes chortled. Bord'n said, "No, but Tim, the caravan can't stay in one place. Chugs wouldn't get anything to eat. So the wagons'll just roll down the Road by a caravan length, and then everyone will spend the day doing repairs."

"What about bandits?"

"We've got Tucker wagon. They've got Spadoni."

"Which are they? I can't tell the wagons apart yet."

"Oh, you'd better know that. In every wagon there's extra stores,"

joker said, "like Milasevik and Wu carry tents and bedding. Doheny, that's the infirmary. Doheny is where you run if you've got time to run.

It's a better hiding place

"Doheny. Front wagon," Tim repeated.

"Spadoni and Tucker store arms-"

"Don't we all have guns?"

Bord'n hesitated. "Shark guns and ammunition are in Tucker. What's in Spadoni isn't for yutzes. Don't be caught wandering around Spadoni wagon. And of course every wagon is part shop."

Yesterday's bandits had a penchant for attacking wheels. Merchant men and yutzes came streaming back from the main caravan to help set up repair facilities; they did wheels first. Undamaged wagons wanted their wheels reground. Presently they were all rolling wheels back down the Road.

By midafternoon Wu and ibn-Rushd were ready to move.

They rolled just far enough to join the rest of the wagons. Then repair and maintenance work continued all up and down the caravan.

A few merchants were not to be seen. Tim had seen activity around Spadoni wagon. He might guess that they were somewhere about, armed, guarding the caravan. Armed with what? It didn't seem like a good day to stroll past Spadoni wagon.

In midafternoon the chefs dug their fire pits and the chugs ambled into the sea. n.o.body had been particularly concerned about hunting. Dinner was skimpy, largely fish and stored vegetables.

Tim became aware that Rian was watching him.

She said, "I might have known Mother would have you if I didn't. I should have taken you on the beach. You would have come then."

Rian made him edgy. Hadn't she flatly rejected him, without his ever having offered? Tim said, "Loria would have brained us both."

"Why would Loria Bednacourt hurt you? Or me?"

"Hang on." Tim spent a minute turning two Earthlife salmon, and thinking.

Then he said, carefully, "You think Twerdahis are all alike? We aren't. Loria doesn't share. She wants her side of the bed, all of it. If she's in the kitchen, n.o.body else is cooking. Her man is hers from his heart out to all twenty-one digits. "It was nearly the truth: Loria would share with her sisters.

"But she's not a merchant."

Again he saw how this would go. "Will you find me tonight?"

"I will," she said tartly, "if you don't stay up till dawn singing!"

When she was out of hearing, he sighed. She'd expected him last night? What kind of signal had he missed?

Better not to know than to guess wrong. A yutz could be in a world of trouble if he rubbed up against a merchant woman who didn't want him.

Loria was far behind him, and she would expect this of him, and hate it.

But Jemmy Bloocher still haunted him. Anything he did with a merchant woman might speak his secret. Tim Bednacourt is a Spiral!

But then Senka ibn-Rushd must already know.

And he burned.

In the morning Rian was there, her back against his, sound asleep. He watched her for a time, savoring her touch without moving, smelling her hair, feeling good.

Rian was lean and flexible and smooth. She made love with her mother's ferocity... and her mother's perception for a man's erogenous zones and how they could be made to react. But Rian paid more attention to what she was doing. The taste of s.e.m.e.n surprised her. He was ticklish just above both hipbones; she was delighted. She made momentary mistakes-an elbow whacking him just under the eye-and caught herself, like an apprentice.

Were merchant women trained somewhere? And the men too?

Faint noises told him other yutzes were awake.

Rian woke when he moved. Scrambling into his clothes, he asked her, "What's Spiral Town like?"

She looked at him sleepily.

"We wonder," he said. "It's so close."

"Why don't you go?"

He improvised. "I think the older people don't want the Spirals to know Twerdahl Town is that close."

"Why?"

"Maybe the Spirals would want to tell us how to live."

Rian yawned. "Maybe so. Anyway, I've never been in Spiral Town.

They used to let us halfway in. They don't anymore, but they still buy from us. Not even Gran s.h.i.+reen ever saw Columbia," she said wistfully.

Damon andJoker weren't in the tent. Tim thought nothing of that. While turning bread out of the woks, he noticed how many men weren't staying around for breakfast.

There were times when a yutz might ask questions, and times when he must listen. A fresh yutz must be taught. This seemed different. This morning the merchants moved in a closed and purposeful pattern, and a yutZ could not make eye contact. Tim could see activity far down the Road, around Spadoni, the weapons wagon. Then men were moving uphill, and everyone was pretending not to notk~e.

Trader secrets.

It took longer to hitch up the chugs, of course, but-as yesterday-the caravan only moved one generous caravan length. Then all the women and yutzes (and no men) began a cleaning program. Wagons were emptied out and every compartment cleaned. Yutzes polished metalwork until, for the first time, Tim saw wagon trim gleaming. Clothing was laundered.

A handful of merchant women hung around Tucker wagon. They were still taking bandits seriously.

Dinner was skimpy again, but n.o.body seemed to mind. Everyone ate in a hurry, talking around mouthfuls of food. Tim never twitched anymore at the sight of men and women talking together. Still... something odd here.

Tim a.s.sembled a dinner for s.h.i.+reen ibn-Rushd, who smiled down at one and all from her perch in the wagon's driver's alcove. She thanked him, and he said, "They all seem indecently cheerful."

"Isn't it wonderful? There's always a time like this once on a circuit. All the men gone. Just the yutz men and the merchant women, and no locals."

Oh.

They were talking in couples, many of them.

The yutzes had cleaned up dinner before the sun dipped into evening clouds, with Quicksilver just behind. In fading dusk there was some singing, some storytelling, but a good deal of pairing up and disappearing into tents. Patriss Dole of Dole wagon sang with Tim, and taught him words and harmony to one of the ballads. Her own voice was very good. They'd never spoken until tonight.

They spent some time watching the sky. Patriss was sure she'd found Argos, a steady star with a blue tinge, in the plane of the planets.

Wouldn't the Argos mutineers be carving up asteroids by now? Tim saw a meteor from the west, not blue-bright enough to match vids he'd seen of Cavorite rising to orbit, but still.

They went to Dole tent. Too late, too dark to be introduced to the other occupants. Just as well. They explored each other by touch in near-perfect darkness, made love, and talked, and loved again.

He'd hoped she would speak of where the merchant men had gone. She didn't, and he didn't ask.

Krista Wu had died of her wounds in the night. They buried her upslope, with a handful of apple seeds.

Thirty men didn't rejoin the caravan until near sunset the next night. They were tired and dirty and laughing among themselves, and again there was no eye contact for a yutz. They had shot a deer... or killed it with something stranger; it seemed chewed almost in half.

Grilling venison in the dusk, Tim could watch the merchants gathering at Spadoni wagon. The tools they were carrying, that Tim had never more than glimpsed, were gone when they broke into twos and threes to get their dinner.

Shortly after dawn, the caravan was rolling through tilted gra.s.slands.

Twenty merchants and yutzes walked past slowly moving wagons.

Though they all carried shark guns, n.o.body seemed to be worried about bandits.

Eight were hunters. They carried the long knives Twerdahls called "weed cutters." The rest were fishers. Most of them carried line and poles, but Tim and Hal had been given long-handled nets.

When they were clear of the wagons, the hunters turned off, inland.