by Larry Niven
"This'll make me conspicuous, won't it, Harlow? Somebody will be putting new information in a file marked Jeremy Winslow,' who is fiction."
"It's fiction, but I wrote it, Jeremy. Trust me."
The next day Medical released Karen's body. They arranged a funeral for the day after. Funerals weren't important events in Spiral Town.
But Brenda came, and Mustafa, and Rita Nogales. They buried her with black pepper and lemon trees at her head and feet.
The children and Harlow stayed with him while he talked to Nogales.
"Thanks for coming. I know Karen would appreciate-"
Nogales rode him down. "The autopsy showed some abnormal chemistry going on," she told them with a touch of belligerence. "Some of us think it's Destiny seafood. People have been losing weight that way for a long time, we don't really know how long. I do it myself, but we damn sure didn't evolve to eat it. Have you any idea if she was eating-"
"Mother and I had lunch together," Brenda said quietly. "Avocado and seafood, surf clam and Earthlife crab."
"Mayonnaise?"
Jeremy listened as Morales quizzed his daughter like a felon. She went away mumbling to herself. Rita Nogales was a solver of puzzles, like Jeremy himself. If he'd known that...
Well, then what?
Two days later, Jeremy Winslow, horn Hearst, owned one-fifth (not onequarter) of Wave Rider.
Jeremy read through a thick file of data, and learned more of the restaurant than he'd learned in twenty-seven years. Karen's three siblings held another fifth each. The last piece rested with an entity that called itself Andy's Bank. "Investment outfit," Harlow said. "They bailed us out with some money just after we opened."
In Spiral Town the law would have dithered for much longer; sometimes years. He said so. "It's communication," Harlow answered.
"That, and an attitude. The law doesn't like ambiguities. If they'd found any discrepancies in the history of Jeremy Winslow, they'd be on your tail already."
''So I'm real?''
"Real and a man of property. Let's celebrate."
"I want to be on the bus at dawn."
"Dawn?"
He couldn't sit still. He paced, leaning on the stick, careful with the knee. "Now, here's my plan. Dawn bus. I want to get off at the Swan, that'll be about midmorning. I'll flag down the noon bus and get to Wave Rider after someone else has finished making dinner."
"There's a noon bus?"
"Why don't you take that one, Harlow? Meet me at the Swan? We'll go on to Wave Rider. In a day or so we'll know if you and the rest of Karen's clan can get along."
"No, I'll.. . dawn bus. Early dinner?"
"Good. What are the neighbors like?" But Harlow didn't have friends she could invite at short notice.
She had not repeated an invitation that might have been only his imagination. Nonetheless that seemed ominous.
* * *
His leg was healing nicely. He was able to get around the kitchen without the cane. He packed for tomorrow's bus trip, and then they spent the afternoon building a dinner for two.
(Speckles pouches all over the table. All the same size, big enough for a head of lettuce, sold with half a cup of speckles in the bottom.
He'd thought the merchants were being stingy. Never wondered if they just didn't have a choice.)
She opened what she called a half-bottle of wine, and tried to make him see what made it superior to whiskey. It was weaker, anyway. Again, he thought he was being cautious.
Harlow hadn't played among Otterfolk in years, nor visited the inn, and he had stories to tell her. He told her what "It's the law!" was about. He got her to telling tales of Destiny Town, and he told her about playing with Varmint Killer in Spiral Town.
lie knew he'd drunk too much when he tried to stand up. Harlow got under his shoulder and led him to bed. She was weaving more than he was.
She got him down to the futon. Then she asked, "Shall I stay?" He said, "Of course, woman, it's your apartment," being more obtuse than should be required of any man; and he let his eyes close and his mouth fall open. He knew no more until morning.
*32*
The Windfarm
I n n k e e p e r S
Not you, not your family, your guests, passing strangers, nobody goes near the Otterfolk birthground. Understand me, Harold?
-Georges Manet, Overview Bureau
He'd leave without her, let her take the noon bus, if he found her asleep. Leave her a note.
But she was bright and perky and handing him a mug of tea in the predawn dark.
Backpacks. Cane. The walk to the Road loosened up his stiff knee.
Apollo finished rising. They flagged down the bus. Harlow pointed out sights as they moved out of Spiral Town.
She was asleep before they reached Terminus.
Too soon, she woke. "Mount Canaveral!" she crowed. "We used to launch Cavorite from here. Land by the ocean, refuel, fly it back here to load up."
"Ever see this yourself?"
"No." She squinted up at the mesa rim. "How's the knee?"
"Not that good. That looks like quite a climb."
The bus rolled on. Harlow asked, "Whereabouts did you and. . .
Andrew. . . ?" and didn't finish.
The bluff was in view. Andrew might still be there, bones picked clean and maybe scattered. Jeremy pointed well past it and said, "Far side of the Swan, on the same side. Andrew would have gone out the same way I did."
Here was the bridge. They signaled to stop the bus, donned packs, and got off, Jeremy leaning heavily on his stick.
Like the bridge, the Swan sagged a little. Lights glowed inside, though the hologram sign wasn't lit. The pit barbecue smelled of recent fire.
Children were all over the place, mid-teens commanding hordes of youngsters with moderate success. They looked too busy to talk. Jeremy and Harlow went in looking for an adult.
Alexandre Chorin was a little old, a little heavy, a little slow to be chasing after children. It was easy to see him as hiding from the noise, here in the shade of what had been the Swan's dining room and was now littered with games and toys. But he seemed glad to see them, or anyone.
"Jeremy's grandchildren will be old enough soon," Harlow told him.
"We thought we'd stop off and look."
"I used to fish here," Jeremy put in.
"We still do," Chorin said quickly. "The lake perch are nice.
There's a pit barbecue we use sometimes."
"But then there was that trouble and everyone stopped coming,"
Harlow said.
Jeremy: "My children missed this entirely. Fishing at Swan Lake-It's still Swan Lake?"
"Oh, yes."
Harlow: "Do the children know-?"
"Oh, yes, it's one reason they come. Duncan Nick? The city planted an oak over him. It's just up the slope."
"You can't miss it. And there are horror stories about the Windfarm innkeepers," in a hoarse whisper. "There's no knowing how many people stayed here overnight and weren't ever seen again."
"Well," Harlow said, "I'd have thought one felon would have babbled stories. How many were there, a dozen?"
"Five, the caravaners say. All gone when the proles came. If you go up to Swan Lake, you can see how easy it must have been to get into the hills."
Jeremy had found a brochure. Day rates. Rates for stays of a week.
List of what a child should pack. A map.
"What's it like, staying here? May we look around?" Harlow asked.
"Of course. Outside too. If you're going to the lake, take some fishing poles."
They went upstairs, pro forma. Harlow went into the nearest room and bounced on a tiny, carefully made bed.
"Nice move, but I didn't leave anything up here," Jeremy said. Her hands smoothed out the bed. "Any interest in anything?" 'Just the roof. Two floors up."
"You rest. I'll go up. What should I look for?"
"Well, the guide spot's working, but see if it got damaged. The floor's Begley cloth
; see if it's been kept up. Look around at the view, all directions. Harlow, it's probably not worth the effort-"
She laughed and went, feet quick on the stairs.
Jeremy went into the men's bathroom. He tried the taps. They'd got the plumbing working again! He used a toilet, then stayed there, private, thinking.
Harlow was staking a claim.
Jeremy Winslow was in mourning! But set that aside, because it was twenty-seven years late to tell Harlow to get lost, and innuendos were getting harder to miss, and that wasn't the problem anyway. He needed to get out of Harlow's sight! For. . . seven hours would have been great.
Half an hour would do.. . might not. He'd be climbing all over a hillside.
He'd see the hill from the roof.
She met him on the stair. "What?"
"I thought I'd look for myself."
"I never stared at a guide spot before. Somebody whacked the casing with a crowbar, looks like, but it must be working or there wouldn't be lights. The Begley cloth's new. What else?"
They walked out on the roof. Jeremy opened the powerhouse casing and looked in. "That's a new guide spot too. It was a snarl of line wire when I left here." He turned in a slow circle. "That way is Swan Lake.
The proles think they went out that way. But that way-look across the Road." She nestled close to sight along his arm. "That's how we came, and there are valleys where we could survive for weeks. Mr. Chorin didn't say the caravan sold them clothing, but I bet they did, a lot."
A proud oak stood above the hillside, easily a quarter-century old.
Duncan Nick's oak, where the women's cesspit had been. What was that growing around its base? To Jeremy's eye it stood out like settlermagic paint: greenery tinged with yellow, and orange flecks on black.
From the oak he traced narrow paths to a thicket of growth, greenand-black shadows with touches of orange. The other ancient cesspit.
Broader paths led from Duncan Nick's oak down to the lodge, and to the lake, and east to the ridge-' 'Another way out," he said, pointing-and to a stand of fruit trees that must have replaced the old spice garden, with a hint of orange in the shadowed green-black around the trunks.
"You think Barda got away," Harlow said.
"She could have. I can. . . could've.
Harlow hugged him from behind, chin on his sfioulder. He plunged on: "Could've told it to Karen that way. Still can. Karen had. . . Barda has brothers." Suddenly he knew what to do. "We've got four hours. Shall I show you how to fish?"
Alexandre Chorin stored their backpacks behind the desk for them, and rented them fishing gear all assembled for instant use. "Do you use flies?"
Harlow stared. Jeremy knew just enough to say, "Harlow, it's a lure you float. Mr. Chorin, have you got actual bait?"
"No. Try digging in the orchard."
"Okay."
The graveyard-turned-spice-garden had turned fruit orchard.
Speckles grew all through it, sparsely, as if a gardener had failed to weed them out. Jeremy studiously ignored them while he dug for earthworms.
There were children all along the near shore, fishing, throwing frisbees, batting at a ball tethered to a pole. A worn, transparent tent sprawled loosely along the south side of the lake, with room for twenty or thirty underneath. Six growing Earthlife trees had become the tent poles. Destiny trees had been chopped down to make room.
Harlow said, "The way the buses run-"
"Yeah." Kids would have to stay overnight; hence the tent.
By silent agreement they walked around the north shore until most of the activity was out of sight and hearing. They took off their shoes.
Harlow didn't flinch from putting worms on a hook. "You can use anything organic, but we didn't bring anything," he told her. They flung the lines a fair distance out, and waited, drowsy in the sun.
Reasonable time passed, and nothing struck.
Bare white rock stretched far into the lake, coming to a point a meter above deep water. Jeremy walked out onto it, set his cane down, and, carefully balanced, flung out his line.
Waited.
A fish struck. He pulled it in.
Harlow came to join him. She maneuvered to put them nearly back to back.
Moving to make more room, he stumbled, started to fall, arms windmilling. She reached and had him, and pulled. He backed into her hip, hard. She lost her balance and splashed into the lake. He barely saved himself from going after her.
The rock fell off steeply. Jeremy went down on his belly and reached for her hand. She could swim, of course. She swam over and, with his arms to anchor her, walked up the rock.
Her clothing clung to her like paint: The sight of her froze him like a rabbit in torchlight. The words he'd planned to say evaporated.
She was furious. She started to say so. Instead she looked into the heat of his stare, and then began to pull his shirt open.
He pulled them together. No other response ever crossed his mind until much later.
He felt so incredibly good.
She curled against him and said, "Tell me you didn't throw me in the lake just to rub up against me."
He laughed like a maniac. Then he said, "I swear to you by everything I own, I did not.''
"Right. Good."
There were children just out of sight; they deemed it better to ignore them. They sorted through their clothes, looked them over critically, put them on anyway. Jeremy asked, "Did you bring a change?"
"Sure. You?"
"Course."
He used his pole to fish her pole off the bottom. They walked back down to the lodge, dripping. She'd got his clothes almost as wet and muddy as hers.
Alexandre Chorin's chuckle kept bubbling through his self-restraint. He had towels for rent. They retrieved their packs and went upstairs.
MEN
WOMEN
Change together in one room? Harlow's suggestion was a wiggle of her eyebrow; his answer a quick headshake. They went in separate doors.
Jeremy spilled his pack, snatched up a shirt and shorts, stripped and put them on, rubbed a towel past his hair, stuffed his wet clothes into the pack, closed it, and was out. To hell with showering. Down the stair fast, but limp past Chorin and, "I think I want to see that oak."
'Just don't overdo it with that leg, Mr. Winslow."
He climbed the hill fast, digging his stick in and pulling himself up. He'd seen speckles growing around Duncan Nick's oak, but the oak was a bit conspicuous; and the graveyard grove, but that must get visitors.
His fragile plan had gone all to hell. Fall in the lake, go back to the
lodge to change, anything for a moment alone with the speckles crop.
Anything, but he hadn't expected- He certainly hadn't expected- Hadn't fought her off, either.
Couldn't. She'd wonder at his motives! Harlow was doing quite enough of that already.
Yeah, right. Karen, I'm sony. I have to do this.
Here: the ancient privy, the men's. Ground-hugging bristly plants, with black stalks that split and split again to become orange thorns whose tips divided down to tiny, tinier, microscopic green needles.
These plants couldn't be ignored, even if nobody here knew what they were. Children must have tasted the buds. A cook who found speckles in the spice patch might try it on food. Did it taste like sterile speckles?
He'd brought two bags. He'd forgotten to bring a glove. He wrapped his hand in a silk scarf and took a pinch of tiny seeds and put them in his mouth, and chewed as he stripped the speckles plants.
Fresh speckles was a bit different. Try mixing it with. . . salt?
He filled the first bag and pushed it deep in his pack, and heard a rustle and knew it was Harlow.
He didn't look around. Had she seen more than one bag? He began stuffing the second bag. She wouldn't find the other unless she dug deep in his pack.
She was nearly breathing in his ear now. He said, "We will never have to buy speckles again."
"Is that what this is?"
&nb
sp; "Don't you know speckles plants? Does anyone outside the Windfarm know what speckles looks like when it's growing?"
"There must be pictures in the teaching programs."
"'Restricted material. Access code?' But prisoners do get released from the Windfarm."
"You're evading."
"We came out of the Windfarm with fertile speckles. We used them for cooking, so the chef got to carry them. I scattered them where I thought they'd grow. Now it's twenty-seven years later and I own a piece of a restaurant. Harlow, I never had to worry about how to keep a restaurant solvent, and now I know we lost a piece of the inn to people I never heard of-"
"They were there at the right time, Jeremy."
"Next time might be worse. So I thought I'd fall in the lake and collect a bag of speckles on the way down to get myself changed."
"Wasn't I supposed to get wet?"
"That would have worked too. If we both get wet, that doesn't work.
If you get wet and then we rub all the water and mud into each other's clothes, that sends us both back together."
She smiled now. He said, "Look, I only suspect it's illegal-"
"You speckles-shy idiot, of course it's illegal! We can't stop buying speckles and still run a restaurant!"
"Of course we'll have to buy speckles. We'll get them from the caravans, just like always. But if hard times come, there's a bag of speckles-"
"How many did you bring?"
She'd seen. 'Just the two."
"One would have done. Any bus can get us back here for more."
"Okay. Stashed where only you and I can find it. We don't tell anyone else."
"You didn't think you'd tell me!"
"It's a crime, Harlow. I thought I'd tell Barry, but as long as you know, that's enough."
That ought to get her.
And he saw that it had. Wave Rider had a secret, and none knew it save Jeremy and Harlow: the inner circle.
They arrived in time to scavenge the last of dinner. Three caravan suppliers had come early and were sharing a room. Otherwise the inn held most of Karen's siblings and children and in-laws. Everyone stayed po.lite, and presently carried Jeremy's and Harlow's backpacks up to separate rooms.
They'd discussed that on the bus.
Jeremy got to Lloyd before they gathered for breakfast. "What have you and Brenda told them about me?"