by Larry Niven
propped against the long wall of the House of Healing. Tim Hann trailed the others, watching them, trying to balance the board on his shoulder as they did.
The board was a few inches shorter than Tim himself, carved from wood that grew in the swamp. It was heavy and awkward. Playful gusts of wind kept swinging it about.
Far up the Road toward Spiral Town, there was dust.
Jemmy stopped and squinted. A plume of dust, far off. He thought he knew what it meant.
Wend Bednacourt carried her board like a wand. She wasn't stronger than he was, but she had the balance. The other riders were running, but Wend trailed back a little. She said, "My daughters have taken an interest in you, Tim."
"I know. But all the others-" It had taken Jemmy two days to notice that the Bednacourt women were the only womeh who would talk to him. In Spiral Town that was normal, but here? "Is it something I'm doing?"
"Tim, do they say marry in Spiral Town?"
"Yes. Of course."
Wend shied back a bit to avoid the wild swinging of his board.
"How's it done?"
"There's a ceremony. You invite-"
"Tim, how do you decide?"
This was no casual conversation. Jemmy set his board down and sat on it, thinking it through.
"We kids all pretty much know each other, time the girls stop talking to us. If I'm interested in a girl-" He decided not to mention Tunia Judda. "-why, maybe I've got a friend who dated her, or knows her, or a friend of a friend." He'd learned quite a lot about Tunia and the Judda family. "Or my sister or maybe a cousin probably knows her, can tell me-"
"You don't talk to her?"
"Her. No, not until we're dating. That's-" He'd never thought of it this way. "-like a contract, like you're buying seed corn or a rooster.
Like we buy each other on spec."
The older woman also sat on her board. "So, two nights ago, Loria spoke to you-"
He could feel himself blushing. "She did."
"What did she say?"
"She told you?"
"We talked," said Wend.
He couldn't lie. He wouldn't know what to hide. He said, "Loria came with me back to the House of Healing. She brought a blanket. I rolled up in mine. I was tired. There wasn't any light, of course, so I couldn't see her face and she couldn't see mine. Talking's easier that way somehow. I just thought we'd talk until I fell asleep.
"She said, 'Do you want to make babies with me?'"
"What did you take that to mean?"
He looked at Loria's mother. "It means rub up against. F-fuck. How could it mean anything else?"
"Yes. Tim, we say that when we want to talk about marrying. Raising children. How to take care of them, how many you can afford-"
"No, look, she touched me. I would have, but I was a little slow, maybe. She was a little distance away and I couldn't see her face. I didn't see it coming. 'Do you want to make babies with me?' and then a hand came out of the dark and had my knee. I pulled, and she came to me, and we did it."
The other board riders were all dut on the water. Leaving them alone. Pointedly?
Wend Bednacourt was smiling, but not at him. "And last night?"
"I couldn'tfind Loria. All day."
"She went with some others, spice hunting."
"Avoiding me? I told her it was my first time. Wend, there are things we're not born knowing. It's dark in the House of Healing. I hit her jaw with my elbow before I got the knack."-of moving slowly, touching everywhere. Darkness had its good points.
"She wanted to let you talk to the rest of us. What happened last night?"
"Tarzana. She came back to the House of Healing with me after dinner. I didn't know what she had in mind, so I didn't push. I was hoping she'd tell me why Loria, if she didn't want to see me. Why. But I didn't know how to ask.
"She said, 'Tim, do you want children?'
"I reached out and got her hand and she said, 'No, Tim,' and I stopped." His memory raced on ahead. Tarzana's voice in the dark: You do want children, don't you?
He'd laughed and said, What, from way over here?
Aren't you interested?
I was, he said lightly, hiding disappointment. It was as if Tarzana blew hot and then cold, offered and then pulled back. Loria had done that too, then relented. He'd have been angry if a Spiral girl did that. Here, he might be missing some signal, some custom.
Loria says she asked you, but you didn't answer, Tarzana said.
She asked, he told Tarzana smugly. I think I answered- He snapped back to the present. "We weren't talking about the same thing at all, were we?"
"No," said Wend.
"Uh-huh." How could he not be flattered? And horrified! These waters were deeper than he'd expected. "Loria knows I didn't know anything. She just. .
"Went ahead with it," Wend said.
"Why didn't she just leave? When she knew I had the wrong idea."
Her mother's lips twitched upward. "Maybe she liked the wrong idea.
A girl might. She's seen every Twerdahi boy and man every day of her life. She could wait for a caravan, but that's so. . ." Wend smiled.
"Everyone does that. You're different. You can do things we can't. Not just the bicycle, Tim, that only came with you. But the oven."
Are all Twerdahl women like this? He chose to ask instead, "So why didn't Loria tell Tarzana?"
"Why don't I ask her that?"
He couldn't stop grinning. "Big joke. On her sister. So why didn't Tarzana leave?"
"Big joke?"
On Loria? On Tim Hann? "Wend, where does that put me? I can't be dating both of your daughters." A weird impulse made him add, "Can I?"
"No, but you don't have to make up your mind right away."
"Good," he said. "Wonderful," meaning it. Then he said, "Wait. Yes, I do. Is that what I think it is?"
The dust plume had settled some while they talked, but it was still there.
Wend said, "They'll he here late tomorrow. Speckles are cheap after they leave Spiral Town, if they've got any left. We usually wait. Unless we're out."
"I never told you why I left Spiral Town."
"Not just following Cavorite?"
Jemmy told her.
Caravan. Merchants' guns. Fedrick blowing a watermelon to bits.
Eight years later: caravan. Fedrick again, Fedrick's gun, Fedrick dying on the floor.
Tim Hann was the mask that hid a merchant-killer. Nobody in Twerdahl Town knew that, but they all knew he was a stranger come straight down the Road ahead of the caravan. Anyone in Twerdahl Town might blurt that out to any merchant.
He didn't tell her his name.
She listened and nodded. He was expecting her to shrink from him, but she didn't.
"I think I'd best keep moving down the Road," he said. "Even if they send someone ahead, I can outride him on a bike."
"How will you feed yourself?"
"I found you. Further down the Road, maybe there are people too."
"Speckles? You can't go to merchants, Tim. What do you think you'll do, trade for speckles with locals? They had to buy theirs from merchants. Idon't keep more than I need for my family. Most people don't."
"Okay, I get stupid and die. At least it's not right away. Wend, I don't
really want to leave."
She said, "Marry Loria or marry Tarzana. Marry into the family.
We'll tell them you're one of us. Do you mind changing your name?"
Huh?
"When a wanderer marries a local-"
"No, I don't mind."
"It's rare, but it has happened."
"I don't mind.''
"All right. Three days now you've been a Twerdahl. Let a merchant see you on a board first, he'll see you as a Twerdahi whatever you do next."
"Am I good enough?" A clumsy Twerdahl would catch a suspicious eye.
"I've watched. Tim, you're good with the board."
"And cooking? Let me do some of the cooking."
"Right."
"Money?"
Jemmy was only carrying a few coins, the price of three or four meals. He showed them to Wend. When she shook her head, he gave them to her. It would be bad if merchants found those on him. Then he asked,
"What do you do if you want something?"
"Ask. Give something back."
"With a caravan?"
"With them too, but they want to know what they're getting."
"I bet they do!"
"What do you need?"
"More clothes. Shoes. Speckles. A board, I guess."
"Nobody has all of that."
"I need the whole town to cover for me, to make the merchants think I'm one of them. Wend, what if I give Twerdahl Town my bike?"
"I'll talk to them," she said. "Over dinner."
The dust crawled toward Twerdahl Town.
The ovens in the Bloocher kitchen outclassed Tim Hann's first pile of lava chunks. Jemmy was sure he could improve his oven. Sitting on his board, his feet wiggling in the sand, he started making sketches.
A few boys watched over his shoulder and made comments.
The Bednacourt girls came to him, all three. "We've been talking,"
Loria said.
"With Wend," Tarzana said.
"Mother," amplified Glind.
Men of Jemmy's age surrounded them, and they were all listening.
Loria pulled him to his feet. "Let's surf."
The town's teen boys followed them into the water. Once beyond the waves, the boys who tried to join them were sQmehow cut off, discouraged.
They watched from a distance, while Bednacourt girls surrounded Tim Hann like three predators.
Tim preempted the conversation. "Your mother explained some things.
I guess I was a fool."
"A fool doesn't get what he wants," Loria said.
"We talked it over," said Tarzana.
Loria: "You're fianced. Both of us."
Tarzana:
"Dating us, you'd say. But that can't last forever, Tim."
Glind: "So no sex."
Tarzana:
"Until you make up your mind."
Tim smiled at Glind and said, "That's easy for you to say." Glind's eyes dropped. Tarzana hastily said, "No, now, Tim, you shouldn't even be fianced to two women. It's only because you're from up the Road."
Loria: "Hands off Glind."
Tim: "I never asked Glind to make babies with me. Why bring her?
I'm not as tough as I look," meaning that two girls should be able to ward off an attack.
Glind's hands thrashed water, turning her board. Tim called, "Big joke, Glind! Glind, I don't mind you talking for your sisters. I don't mind waiting either. I want to know what you're like. Both. What I can't figure out-"
Glind turned her board to face him again. He said, "I can't figure how you and you, and you too, Glind, decided I'd make a good husband. How do you know?"
They didn't answer.
"I told Wend. Did she tell you? The merchants want me. If I can pass for a Twerdahi, they'll pass me by. Did she tell you why they want me?"
"Tell everyone," Glind said coldly. "At dinner."
An arc of strangers faced him as they carried their boards in. Surfers straggled in behind him. Jemmy felt like a bug on a pin.
He saw no point in waiting. He began to talk.
It went better than he'd expected. There were faces like masks, people who wondered when Tim Hann would next loose violence about him.
But many more grew raucous as Twerdahi Town worked schemes to befool the traders.
Tim Hann joined the Bednacourt girls. He had wondered if his problem would solve itself at this time, but Loria and Tarzana set themselves at his sides, and no other woman of Twerdahl Town wanted his company. He was fianced. Twice.
In early afternoon wagons began moving past. Twerdahls clustered about the open sides. Jemmy watched from a board on the water.
Loria, floating beside him, waved broadly out to sea and shouted,
"Outside!"
Green water was humping out there. Big wave coming.
For his ears alone Loria said, "We surf when the merchants are in.
Dad says it distracts them."
"Merchants are hard to distract."
"You want them to remember you like this. Surf!"
Kneel. Arms in the water, sweeping like oars. Sliding down, down the great green hill of water, Tim Hann stood up and held his balance.
He heard Loria shout "Walk it forward!" and didn't have strength to laugh. He could feel what she meant, though. He was too high on the wave, he needed to point the board down to slide faster. The problem was that he couldn't move his feet!
He got a fair distance, he seemed to fly forever, before the wave rolled over and flipped him and the board.
He'd never glanced at the wagons.
The wagons parked far down the Road, nearly out of sight. The chugs were an ocher wave rolling down the sand, raising dust in a great khaki cloud.
"They'll stir up the sharks," Loria shouted, and waved him toward the beach. The surfers were getting out of the water.
Jemmy went to help with the cooking. Faintly from down the Road they could hear the popping of gunfire.
Harl Cloochi had managed to hook some huge delta-winged Destiny fish. Younger men came running when they saw it flopping in the shallows, wrestled it into submission, and brought it up. It covered one of the grills from end to end.
The merchants returned on foot. They brought no wares, but some of them carried fruits and a great yellow squash: produce bought in Spiral Town.
The merchants had noticed Tim Hann's oven. Master Granger wanted to use it to cook the big squash. Jemmy guessed that they would ruin the oven if they weren't careful. It was nothing but lava chunks held together by their own weight.
So he made them wait while he punctured the squash with a big fork to let steam out, and helped them roll the squash in, and built up the fire again, smiling like an idiot and trying not to shy away from Master Granger. Master Sean Granger was an older man, proprietor of the second wagon, though a younger woman drove. They'd shared dinner with Dad and Jemmy at Harry's Bar, twice before Dad's accident.
Jemmy didn't dare not meet his eyes.
"That should do it. Thank you," Master Granger said to him.
"I should get back to cooking," said Tim Hann.
He had set himself in charge of watching the great fish cook. He saw too late that in the cool of coming night the merchants were all standing around the cookfires. But their eyes passed right over Tim Hann the cook, or through him. He'd made the right move after all.
"What would you call this thing?" Master Granger asked of nobody in particular.
Berda Farrow said, "Hell's angelfish."
"Nice"
She said, "I didn't make it up. That's its name. We see them a lot."
"I miss sub clams," Granger said. "In a month the Otterfolk'll have a mess of them for us."
Jemmy smiled. More people, down the Road? He called to Wade Curdis, trying not to overdo the accent. "Berda, Wade, we should turn this monster."
Wade was a strong man in his thirties. He and Berda and Tim Hann turned the fish easily. The merchants backed up to give them room.
"We're lucky there," Granger said. "If Otterfolk were people, they'd eat the best fish themselves."
Wade turned to stare. Tim Hann didn't look around.
Twerdahls didn't like to interrupt merchants, but Wade spoke anyway. "These Otterfolk, who are they? We never see anyone but you and us."
The merchants laughed inordinately. Jemmy looked about him, at merchants mingling with Twerdahls-any of whom could blow his secret to bits-and contrived to be busy. Destiny fish was tough and chewy unless it was cooked slowly. Cooking was creation itself; it seemed to put the universe in perspective.
'The Otterfolk, they're not people," a younger merchant said. "They live in the ocean.
We trade them tools and stuff for fish. There are some Destiny fish we can eat, and they tend the Earthlife fish too."
'You only come through three times a year," Wade persisted. "Why don't they come trade with us?"
"Can't. They hate sub clams, though. Used to kill them, till we came along. Sub clams eat Destiny turtles, but they're good eating, for us, that is.,'
Tim decided the fish was done. He'd never seen Hell's angelfish before, but like many Destiny fish, the meat came apart in layers. Tim Hann cut and other Twerdahls served.
A merchant's accent said, ". . . Criminals."
Tim Hann served a perfect strip of fish to an exotic and lovely merchant woman. "Boiling potatoes now and the big squash in a bit," he said to her, precisely because Spiral men didn't talk to women. But Jemmy Bloocher had heard that younger merchant's voice before, barking some order at Fedrick.
And the other voice was old Harl Cloochi. "It's just a damn rumor, of course, but we almost never see a Spiral, so how do we know?"
"There's some truth in it," the merchant said. "Spiral Town takes care of their own criminals. I spoke as witness once at a trial in Spiral Town. They banged the yutz afterward."
"Ah. All right."
"But, Harl, if a killer gets to the Road before they catch him, how can they chase him down? Most Spirals never get out of town at all. A runner doesn't have to stick to the Road, and even if he did, how far did he go? It's a long, long Road."
"So they just let him go?"
"I suppose they chase him awhile. Longer if he did something sticky. Then they just tell us and let him go."
"And leave him for us! Let the Road towns deal with their dregs!"
"Well, that and speckles deprivation."
Appreciative silence.
The merchant's voice said, "A lot of the communities along the Road think the same way. Thing is, Harl, we're not executioners for someone else's dregs, and some of what they call crime isn't all that serious.
When a yutz wants to ride the wagons, sometimes we see if he'll work Out."
"Even criminals?"
"A man on the run can make a damn good labor yutz And they'd walked out of range.
Late in the night, after the merchants went back to their wagons, Han Cloochi took Tim Hann aside. He asked, "Was the man you killed a labor yutz?"
"I never heard the words until tonight."
"Well, there was a labor yutz killed in Spiral Town a few days ago."