Destiny's Road

by Larry Niven

  "I'll do it.''

  Barda and Shimon went out with the rest. Half-beard waited until they were gone. Willametta was tending Miledy, the pregnant woman, but listening too.

  "The pose," Jemmy reminded him.

  "It looks like this." Half-beard stood with his arms held high to the sides. "Do it."

  Jemmy stood, feet apart, and raised his arms. Any speckles-shy could have done it.

  "Hold it till I tell you to quit. Barda says you're smart."

  "Good."

  "You need to fool the probes into thinking you're me. Can you do that?"

  "Not yet. Tell me about proles."

  Half-beard studied him.

  Jemmy said, "We're the, Barda said gatherers? You're trusties?

  Some-one is trusting you. Your bosses. That would be the probes?"

  "Proles."

  "Proles. Keep talking, I need to hear you."

  "Ten men and women. They rotate. We don't know their names. We don't ever have to."

  "When you talk to them-"

  "You say Yes man. If it's a woman, Yes mam. They sound alike, so if you're outside it doesn't matter if you can't tell. You know them 'cause-

  "

  "They've got more orange. They wear the orange."

  "Right."

  His arms were beginning to ache.

  "Where do they live?"

  "Down the Road through the cleft, not far. If you go there you don't come back. Andrew, Barda says you've fired yutz guns? What the probes have is worse. Don't ever go up against the probes. And when you talk to them you say the Parole Board. Like their main job is to let us go."

  Jemmy bobbed his chin. His arms and shoulders were hurting now. He held his breathing deep, and reached.

  "I'm going out tomorrow to farm in the rain," he said. "I'm a trusty. Probes come to check on us? But they can't see anything about me but a big jacket with a hood and an orange stripe, unless there's something funny about your legs-"

  Half-beard laughed, a full-throated bellow.

  Jemmy said, "Right. But you have to tell me what they think you'll be doing-"

  "Sit down. Lie down."

  Jemmy lowered his arms, then sat. "I don't know how to get speckles off a plant. Do I have a sack?"

  "Backpack. You get your gear after you leave the stormbock.

  Gatherers get a pack and a scoop glove, this time of year. You get a bird gun. They strip the speckles with the scoop gloves. Come spring they'd be planting. Weeding takes a weed cutter. Probes don't give gatherers weed cutters, so you have to cut the weeds. But you still get the bird gun, and a pack too, but there's rescue gear in yours. You get your gun in the toobhouse and hang it back when you come home, and the probes replace the ammo while you're gone. They take the packs.

  "Now, as far as the Parole Board is concerned, nothing, nothing stops us from gathering speckles, and that's how they pick trusties, so you better not show them anything else. Otherwise you don't have to know anything except to count gatherers and see they do the work."

  "Count?"

  Half-beard grinned. He said, "You met Shimon. He'll help you. You watch Shimon, don't make it too obvious, and he'll point the way if you get confused-"

  "And what will you be doing while Andrew Dowd is leading a work party?"

  "Leading a shift." Half-beard grinned. "And that's my problem."

  Twenty-two prisoners, Jemmy thought. The trusties are prisoners too. Firebird shorts and ponchos would mark them anywhere outside the Winds. Go out without them and you're naked in a storm, and birds tear you apart.

  But now the storm gives up a stranger. The Parole Board doesn't know about a twenty-third gatherer carrying shorts and windbreakers that aren't red and yellow with an orange stripe.

  Now the probes can count twenty-two while the other Andrew Dowd is off. . . where? Gathering whatever might be needed when six prisoners disappear wearing clothes they shouldn't own.

  Barda Winslow and Andrew Dowd and four others. Not Jemmy Bloocher, unless he can talk his way in.

  Do the rest know?

  Half-beard was watching his face. "Do you think you can be me?"

  "There's no telling what I might have to know. I got Barda talking yesterday. Tell me how you got here."

  Half-beard scowled and turned away.

  Jemmy said, "The Parole Board knows how you got here, Andrew. When they ask me, I'd better know."

  Half-beard spoke without turning. "Murder twice. They don't want to know any more. If they do, you killed them when they tried to rob you, okay? The damn tribunal didn't believe you."

  "Transport?"

  "Trans-? They walk us in. Felony tape around our wrists, crossed like this in front of us. There's a wagon sealed bike a safe, with gun slits, and tugs to pull it. We stick close to that. We're already wearing firebird colors. If we run, serve us right. Andrew, I got to start dinner sometime. Come along."

  "I was a caravan chef."

  "Barda said."

  He noticed more today. Food was stored in bins near the stove: grains, fresh and dried fruit, potatoes and carrots and other vegetables, a big bottle of cooking oil, some spices. Half-beard opened the bins with a key. Cookware was in there too, including heavy pans and cooking knives. The ovens and burners seemed to run continually, keeping the place warm.

  Cooking was wonderfully relaxing. Jemmy helped where he could, peeling and cutting vegetables and feeding the fire, until he got tired.

  Then he watched. Wibbametta and Half-beard set up the wok.

  Indoor cooking was most unlike the fire-pit cooking he'd learned on the Road. Suddenly, powerfully and painfully, Jemmy missed the kitchen in Bboocher Farm.

  The gatherers brought a dead bird in with them and gave it to Halfbeard, who passed it to Jemmy and Willametta. Jemmy was startled to find himself holding two raptor-clawed legs while Willametta took the other pair. Big wings drooped between. Eight kilos of Destiny bird!

  Half-beard shouted, "We don't stare at it, Andrew, we cut it up and cook it!" Willametta smiled and showed him how to slice under the feathers. The bird didn't seem to have a distinct skin. The feathers were narrow fractal spikes based in muscle tissue. The blood was rich, dark red. This was no relative of the shelled varieties Jemmy had encountered along the Crab.

  "I was expecting Earthlife," Jemmy said. He was surprised, now he thought about it, to find himself holding a l~cnife. Twerdahi Town wouldn't trust a stranger so. "Where are the speckles?"

  "You're gonna love this, Andrew. Barda showed me how to stir-fry Destiny bird with potatoes and onions. Speckles? We don't need speckles.

  The birds and turtles around here concentrate the elements in the meat."

  "But is it all-"

  "Sure. The wagons bring in Earthlife food, and we kill windbirds for the meat." He waved the cooking oil. "This is the only fat we get, and they don't give us enough.

  "We were real glad to see you, Andrew. Just anyone wouldn't pass for one of us. It had to be someone who's been starved." Half-beard smiled. "I'd kill a probe for a rasher of bacon."

  Willametta's lips twitched: a token of a smile. "Fletch. Say fletch of bacon. People will think you're easy."

  The gatherers were piling their ponchos into the dryer, taking firebirdcolored towels and trooping back to the showers.

  Before the lights went out, Dennis Levoy cut his hair to match Halfbeard's.

  20

  The Speckles Crop

  You can't eat these seeds straight. On f00d they're almost salty, almost metallic. I hope we can get used to the taste.

  -Dutton, #2 Hydroponics

  Jemmy entered the stormbock first, with Shimon and four he hadn't met. He got their names: a trusty would know. Rafik, Shar, Denis, Henry- "Henry?

  You found me."

  Henry grinned. "You looked like a drowned dustbird."

  "Trusty!" Shimon snapped.

  "-Trusty," Henry said.

  "Door, Trusty." That was Shimon again, reminding "Andrew" that the trusty was always fir
st through a door.

  He walked into pulsing yellow-white light.

  It stopped him for an instant. A flood of raindrops flared irregularly as the light waxed and waned. Somewhere in his murky memory... hadn't he seen this before? Flashing yellow rain. Too tired to look up. A pair of skeletons took him by the arms and told him "Don't say birdfucking aloud!" and led him out of hell.. . some kind of hallucination?

  He didn't look up now either, because two bird-shapes and a cart waited outside in the rain. A cart pulled by a little smooth-shelled machine.

  Jemmy lifted his hood and, as hood and arm hid his face from them, shouted over the thunder. "Probes?"

  Shimon nodded violently.

  Jemmy had thought they'd wait in the toolhouse, where it was dry.

  The gatherers were all pulling their hoods up. Jemmy wiped his eyes and looked around and had to throttle a laugh. The hoods had eyes and beaks!

  The proles came near, one behind the other and a little to the side. The orange stripes on their ponchos were broad~r than a trusty's.

  Weapons dangled at their sides, belted over ponchos. Jemmy had seen merchants returning such things to Spadoni wagon after a bandit hunt.

  They bore another clear sign of their power. Half-beard hadn't told him that probes would wear pants! Big loose pants and boots to keep legs and feet dry. Luxuries beyond your wildest dreams.

  Jemmy stepped forward, eagerness over fear. "Yes, man?"

  The lead probe's voice was rusty, and male. "Get on with it." He waved, and Jemmy saw the toolhouse, like the short arm of an L built onto the barracks building.

  The gatherers were cinching the strings on their ponchos. None of them moved, not even Shimon, until "Andrew" took the handles on the high-wheeled cart and pushed it toward the toolhouse.

  Wooden bed, metal wheels. A crude piece of work, very different from the low-built machine that had been pulling it, but it robbed easily. It held empty backpacks painted in the colors of a firebird, and one that held something massive.

  The probes maintained their staggered position. Attack one, you'd be shot by the other.

  The door was blocked by a thick metal beam with a big crude metal lock. A probe opened it. His sleeve hid the key; he returned it to a zipped poncho pocket. Jemmy pulled the cart inside, and the gatherers filed in after him.

  He lifted out the heavy backpack. It was full of bullets. Lungshark bullets (yutz bullets) were this size, but these looked wrong and felt light. Jemmy didn't pause to study them. He found the ammo bin where Andrew had said it would be. He unlocked it. It was near empty. He poured most of the bullets in. A handful went into a pocket in his poncho. He returned the pack to the cart.

  The gatherers were picking up empty packs and big duck-f oot-shaped gloves. There was a pack with a bigger orange patch. Jemmy took that, and glanced in before he donned it. Rope, and a big box marked with a red cross.

  The half-dozen bird guns were shark guns, yutz guns, and nothing but. Jemmy loaded a gun and got his first good book at the bullets. The business end was a cluster of little pellets, not a slug. The gun took eight.

  Shimon never stopped watching him. Jemmy wished he would lose that grin: it called attention to them both.

  Still moving briskly, as if he had been here too often to find it interesting, Jemmy followed the last gatherer. He glanced back once.

  Blacksmith-level technology here; settler magic in the barracks- "Snap it up, Trusty."

  "Sorry, man." "Andrew Dowd" stepped briskly into the Road, leading his gatherers to their work site. Amnon took last place. The proles stayed to lock the toolhouse.

  Twenty meters down the Road, Jemmy turned to book back. Above the barracks, pure light flapped like a banner and blazed bike a lightbulb, too bright to look at. Jemmy squinted hard and looked anyway. The roof might have been Begley cloth, but in this light he couldn't tell. The flagpole was three poles meeting in a narrow tripod on the barracks roof.

  The flag must have been at least ten meters by seven.

  You couldn't get lost with that bight to guide the way. But how much power was being burned here? How long had it been burning? Cloth that burned like a lightbulb, that was settler magic!

  From the beginning Jemmy had seen a flood of electrical energy.

  Barda's kitchen would have fed a dozen times the Bloocher family. Hot water at the turn of a knob, and enough to wash twenty gatherers at once!

  All these ponchos and shorts and blankets cycling endlessly through the big machine that was never turned off. And this!

  There wasn't enough Begley cloth to power a fraction of all this.

  Where were they getting their power?

  A sudden downpour turned it all into a great half-globe of yellowwhite rain. Rain hid the last of his line of gatherers, and the proles weren't in sight. Jemmy turned and walked on.

  He looked back rarely. Rain and mist hid stragglers. He assumed the probes were mounting rear guard. They couldn't watch him fumbling with the strings of his poncho, snarling them in knots, until he finally managed to cinch wrists and neck and waist against the rain.

  Shimon kept pace behind him. When he caught Jemmy's eye, Shimon's casual pushing gesture waved him straight ahead. Jemmy grinned at that.

  He was following the Road along row after row of speckles crops. How could he get lost?

  Probes might guess something if he stopped where speckles plants had already been stripped, or led them past plants ready to harvest. But Half-beard was out with the gatherers yesterday, and he'd guided them to the end of the Road at day's end.

  He felt/heard the rain stop. For a long moment the air cleared, and when Jemmy looked back, the last plodder was a shape too big to be anyone but Amnon Kaczinski. No probes.

  And the rain resumed, and they marched on.

  The Road ended in a muddy pond: a shallow crater. Cavorite had hovered here. When Jemmy was sure where he was, he waved into the plants.

  The gatherers moved in. They knew where they'd stopped last night. Shimon looked back once before he followed the rest.

  The probes were in place. They followed Amnon in, then separated and began to circle wide around the little crowd of gatherers. The gatherers formed a line, one to a row, and followed the rows of speckles plants.

  Jemmy Bloocher moved among them, watching and learning. Andrew Dowd moves among the gatherers, supervising.

  With gloves built like pieces of an umbrella, they stripped the branches, holding their packs to let a rain of bright yellow dust fall in. Rain was turning the bottoms of the packs into a sludge of tiny yellow speckles seeds. The packs would be heavy, coming back.

  He passed near Shimon. Head down, Shimon shouted above the rain.

  "Look around, not just at me. You're not just watching us work. You're protecting us."

  "From what?"

  Shimon looked up, disgusted. "Just pretend. Anything that pops up, the proles'lb get it first."

  Jemmy hadn't been told of any danger. Shimon went on, "They're seeing if the ground is clear. Any bird they find, they'll shoot it-"

  "Any bird?"

  Still annoyed, still obtrusively patient, Shimon explained. "Any bird that doesn't eat meat must eat plants, right? Any bird you see is after us or the speckles. So the probes do a circle, then they'll take a pass through the rows, then they'll go home and get dry. Home for lunch."

  He said it like a curse.

  Jemmy moved on.

  Winnie Maclean looked like an elf or wraith, very thin and fragile.

  She smiled up at him and then looked down again, working briskly. Eerily beautiful she was, if you could forget that she was starving.

  He got a conspiratorial leer from Duncan Nick, to whom he had never spoken at all. Jemmy watched until Duncan suddenly remembered what he was supposed to be doing with his hands.

  A woman's eyes snagged his own, though her hands didn't pause in stripping branches. A once-pretty face turned hard. Was that hatred? What had Jemmy ever done to her?

  He was
idle while she worked. Trusties must get a lot of this.

  Jemmy was going past when her head beckoned.

  He moved closer. -And in the next row over, a face turned toward him within a gatherer's hood. Narrow head, narrow nose, yellow-brown skin, and Oriental eyes: the same face with a smile like sunlight.

  The angry twin said, "They'll leave you. You know that." Hmm?Jemmy asked casually, "Who's going, Rita?" This had to be Rita or Dolores Nogabes.

  "Not us either. We're not crazy. He wants to go over the mountains!"

  "Who do I talk to if I want to go?" Rita shrilled laughter. "Who?"

  "Willametta, bet. She's with you know."

  With Half-beard: the other Andrew. "And Shimon's with Barda?"

  "Nobody talks to Shimon." Rita Nogales looked down, dismissing him.

  He moved on. The other twin smiled at him and said, "Good day for picking, Trusty."

  He couldn't help smiling back. "Is that sarcasm? I wouldn't know, Dolores."

  "It doesn't get drier. Gets noiser, gets windier, sometimes the air burns your throat. If there's windbirds you maybe have to hold the pose for half a day, and then the Board wants to know why your pack's light.

  You were a yutz?"

  "Yeah."

  "The trader women, they teach you anything?"

  Dolores Nogales's eyes were direct and speculative. Jemmy's instinct was to back up a few centimeters. He said, "I think your sister hates me. You don't?"

  "Rita's being stupid. You're lucky. Talk to me later."

  He moved on, thinking pleasant thoughts.

  What did trusties and probes get out of this? They got just as wet as the gatherers. . . but probes went home for lunch, and everyone took their orders.

  Anyone but probes had to take a trusty's orders.

  Of course you couldn't trust random felons to cook. There must be poisons to he found in the lava scrub, and cooking knives could kill, or a heavy pan. Might as well give the cook a gun and call him a trusty.

  But cooking meant trusties stayed dry one day out of two. And anyone a trusty liked would also stay dry one day out of two.

  It was Andrew's day outside and Barda's day in. They'd had to arrange something to get Shimon out here guiding "Andrew." If Shimon wasn't with Barda, maybe Barda was rubbing up against another man?