Destiny's Road

by Larry Niven

  "About the Windfarm? Brenda and I won't tell them anything, Jeremy.

  We talked it over. It just wouldn't be good." Lloyd laughed suddenly.

  "And then you show up with Harlow!"

  "She can help when the caravan-"

  "Sure."

  At least the timing was sweet. Whatever the Winslow clan remembered of their stepmother. . . however much they mourned Karen, now a lifegiver. . . whatever they thought of the pit chef who was probably rubbing up against his stepmother-in-law. . . they were shorthanded. It was late autumn. The outbound spring caravan was due in five days.

  Over the next few days Harlow and the Winslow clan found some sort of adjustment. Jeremy didn't have to watch dominance and accommodation games. The trick was to stay outside. He tended the pit, and tried out some of what he thought he'd learned in Romanoff's, and upgraded his tools for the onslaught to come.

  He tested his leg by swimming with the Otterfolk, reacquainting himself with them. If they noticed his game leg, that was all to the good:

  they'd guess why he wouldn't surf.

  Harlow and Chloe surfed with them, riding waves in tandem. Harlow had returned to the board as if she'd never been away.

  They'd need the Otterfolk's goodwill, to get fish to feed the merchants.

  Harlow simply poured one bagful of speckles into their speckles shaker can. "It's the obvious place for it. The way we run the inn, everyone'll think someone else got us more speckles." He stopped her from adding the second bag, but he had no excuse at all.

  A day later he'd found one. "Taste this."

  She sipped. "Smooth. Grapefruit and vodka and. . . salt?"

  "Secret recipe," he said.

  "Speckles. Sea salt and speckles?"

  They called the drink a Salty Dog, and the last bag of fertile speckles stayed in the bar.

  Rita Nogales phoned. She had answers. Fresh avocado reacting to speckles in the mayonnaise, in Karen's and Brenda's mixed seafood dish, produced a mild allergic reaction that disappeared without obtrusive symptoms. Only a patient already sick was threatened. Avocado picked two days earlier wouldn't react. Hardly surprising if nobody had noticed in two hundred years.

  Nogales was crowing, sure that anyone she talked to must be just delighted. She could live with throwing away Hope Batch and Batch One, but all the superskin on Destiny? Jeremy was glad he'd answered the phone. Anyone else would have screamed at the woman.

  Even he hung up in a black mood. Avocados. . . what a lousy, trivial...

  With two days to spare, Johannes and Eileen Wheeler arrived with a wagonload of green and root vegetables pulled by two goats and a tug.

  "Hell of a lot of prep work for three days of pure madness," Johannes told Jeremy, grinning and slapping a goat's flank. "I expect you can use the help?"

  "Yes. Do not introduce me to the goats." Johannes had once insisted on doing that before Jeremy put on his butcher's hat.

  For a day, then, he and Harlow faced Karen's entire family. Then all

  four men went off to hunt and left just the women and the gimp. Jeremy didn't see any fireworks. They were being civilized. Eileen tried once or twice to involve her father in some kind of property discussion.

  As for the separate rooms, "There's no point," Harlow told him. "We came here together. They know where you were staying. They don't know how long you fought me off-"

  "Hey."

  "We probably even walk like we're rubbing up against each other."

  "You do. I have this deceptive limp."

  "Jeremy, we're not doing them a favor here. People like to file people in subroutines. It's easier for them if they think of us as a couple."

  Matters of courtesy be damned, the room would be needed. A day ahead of the caravan, Harlow moved into Jeremy's room.

  He liked it. He dreamed of Karen and woke guilty, but with a woman in his bed, he could sleep.

  They came at noon, announced by a cloud of dust.

  A wagon was the length and width of a bus, but taller, and two tugs were enough to pull it. They numbered a full twenty wagons: no yutzes yet, but eighty merchants and perhaps twenty-five suppliers. They rolled past Wave Rider and out of sight.

  In Spiral Town the caravan's arrival had been very like this. Wave Rider had twenty-two rooms, and that had always been barely enough.

  Caravans carried tents, after all, and did not look for unnecessary expense. Wave Rider housed merchant families with elders and children.

  Merchants' relatives and businesses that dealt with the caravan were the caravan's supply line, and they would want rooms: they often doubled up.

  Romances and marriages had started that way.

  Forty or so to be housed in twenty-two rooms. Over a hundred to be fed! Wave Rider geared up for business.

  *33*

  The Spring Caravan

  The natives are irrelevant to humankind on the Crab. They're not as madly versatile as men.

  -Wayne Parnelli, Marine Biology

  There was no winter in Destiny's year. Removing winter allowed the other seasons to be almost the right length for the Earthtime clocks.

  In order for the spring caravan to reach Destiny Town in spring, it must reach the Neck in autumn. Wave Rider hosted the spring caravan in early autumn, and the previous summer caravan carrying goods acquired along the Crab, three weeks later.

  It was autumn now: the nights were cooling. Dionne, party of eight filed out onto the pier to watch the sunset.

  Old Wayne Dionne traded in Terminus, selling carved and painted shells and similar goods collected along the Road by his family in Dionne wagon. Jeremy had known them for years. When they filed back toward the fire pit, Wayne called, 'Jeremy, meet Hester. She's old enough for the wagons now."

  'Hello. Hester." Wayne's granddaughter had grown tall, and kept the quiet smile. "Will any of you be staying, then?"

  'No, the tent's enough for us. Just meals tonight and tomorrow. We wouldn'tmiss your cooking."

  "I have something for you." Jeremy showed Wayne what he'd found on the beach west of here: a flattish shell nearly a meter long. Rainbows played along its inner face where Jeremy had polished it.

  Wayne looked dubious.

  Jeremy persisted. "It doesn't look like a back shell, does it? More like

  a skullcap? This at the end would be where the beak extension broke off."

  "The beast would be huge."

  Jeremy set it aside.

  Wayne said, "No, sell it to me. Somebody might be interested, back in Destiny Town. Forty?"

  Money changed hands.

  Jeremy asked, "Wayne, what would you think of my joining a caravan?"

  And he watched Wayne's slow grin. "Unlikely. Why would you want to at your age?"

  "I never saw a caravan pit barbecue. Everything I know is secondhand."

  "You do fine."

  "Would I do better if I'd been up and down the Road?"

  "Maybe."

  "Would you want me in the cooking crew if you had to eat the result?"

  "Maybe. Hester, what do you think?"

  The girl smiled. Jeremy grinned back. Hester hadn't tasted his cooking or the Road's. Wayne wasn't taking him seriously.

  Wayne wasn't a merchant.

  Chloe and Harlow came out with the large salad bowl. Harlow stopped for a lingering kiss before going back in.

  More merchants were gathering around the fire pit, or watching the sunset fade and the Otterfolk play. Merchants and suppliers did business here. Not many would bother to talk to the chef. Jeremy wore his pit chef's persona like a vividly painted mask, and of course the light hid him too.

  Jeremy had persuaded Harold Winslow that he could run a pit barbecue. So Harold had run a strip of lighting along the deck's edge, above where Jeremy dug the pit. "My guests eat late," he'd said. In that electric blaze Jeremy hadn't been able to tell whether food was raw or cooked.

  In two weeks it had become much easier than trying to judge by sunset-light. And in this blue-tinged light n
o merchant from Tim Bednacourt's past had ever recognized him.

  "This is one thing you almost never get on the Road," an older man said, not to Jeremy. "Lettuce." He looked around for inn personnel. "You grow this yourself?"

  "Half our back garden is planted in lettuce," Jeremy said, and kept the neutral grin as he recognized Joker ibn-Rushd, aged and weathered and gone a bit soft. He babbled On: "After all, it'd be wilted mush before it got here from the Terminus farms."

  Joker was frowning in the harsh, blue-tinged light. Better not give him time to think about where he'd seen this barbecue chef. "I'm Jeremy Winslow, part owner. You're new here?"

  "Not quite new. I'm Dzhokhar Schilling. My wife Greta, my daughter Shireen."

  Jeremy clasped his hand and said, "Dzhokhar Schilling," careful of his pronunciation, because Jeremy Winslow had never called this man

  'Joker." "Hello, Greta. Hi, Shireen," more handclasps for the young woman and the ten-year-Old girl.

  Joker was saying, "We're ibn-Rushd. You buy our cookware. I've spent time at Wave Rider, but usually I eat in the restaurant. I see enough of pit barbecues!"

  "But it's a new thing to me," Greta laughed. "For twelve years we've worked Dzhokhar's shop in Destiny Town."

  Joker had married a woman fifteen years his junior. She was small, pale of skin and hair, a bit plain, too easy to overlook. Jeremy asked her, "You've never been on the Road?"

  "No. Dzhokhar has been trying to prepare me."

  Jeremy, trying to picture that, said, "We hear interesting rumors,"

  suspecting he already knew more than he was supposed to, and less. Had Joker explained- Joker grinned at them both. "Things not to be told." The tuna must be cooked through by now. Jeremy drafted Lloyd, and together they turned it onto a platter and carved. The Schillings watched. Other merchants gathered to watch the show and to serve themselves.

  Jeremy asked Joker, "How was that?"

  Joker ate a mouthful. "Skillful."

  "I have to ask. Everything I know about pit cooking, I learn by asking. I've sometimes thought of joining a caravan."

  "Yes, I see." Joker was amused. "Try grilling your fish when something has delayed the wagons. Cook and carve by dying sunset light, and Quicksilver already gone. You'll know then what a caravan chef's first law is. 'Get more lights!' Stick with the lights, Jeremy."

  Turnover was high in the caravans, but there were still familiar faces.

  Put Jeremy Winslow under blue light, dress him in white, age him, scar him: no merchant would know him from the past. But, even dressed in a merchant's flamboyant garb, Tim Bednacourt still might be remembered in daylight.

  Of course he'd be crazy to go now. It was the wrong caravan!

  After the spring caravan moved on. . . Harlow had fallen in love with Wave Rider, not Harold Winslow, maybe not Jeremy either. If Jeremy married her, she'd have his fifth of the inn after he was gone.

  Come spring, speckles would be sprouting around the lettuce patch.

  He'd imposed that time limit on himself. Wave Rider was too public: a speckles crop couldn't be ignored for long. In early summer would come the outbound autumn caravan, and he must go.

  But go how?

  Hadn't he had this conversation once, long ago, with murderers trying to hijack a wagon? Nobody could cross the Neck alive, nobody could travel the Road, except with a caravan. Even a lone captured wagon would be attacked.

  Tim Bednacourt had run the length of the Crab by keeping to the peaks no man had climbed. Now he was nearing fifty and he limped. Now he'd have a secure speckles supply; but could he still climb? Climb along the frost line, dip down for food and water, up and over to circle around any bandits. He'd even considered traveling up the narrow side of the Crab, but on the maps that looked lethal.

  He'd need a way to cross the Neck. A boat, a surfboard: the currents ran the right way. He'd 'want a cockade, too. He hadn't found them growing anywhere.

  What he was looking for was the least crazy way back.

  And that was to talk himself aboard a caravan, if it was even possible. His family was serving dinner in the restaurant, out of earshot. He could sound out a few peripheral people, now.

  The slow-cooking part of dinner was taking care of itself. Guests milled and sampled. Waver Rider's people milled and cooked. Jeremy joined a dozen guests out on the pier.

  He knelt at the edge of the pier, water lapping just below his knees, and reached out with a slice of sweet potato. To the ten-year-old girl he said, "Shireen, go like this."

  Three flattish heads popped up.

  "Winston," he said, and one of the Otterfolk came forward to take the sweet potato. Short arms, wide hands with four thick, short fingers.

  Jeremy handed sweet potato slices to Shireen. Shireen began distributing them to the other Otterfolk. Winston was still watching Jeremy.

  Jeremy curled and uncurled just his fingers, no thumbs. Eight, sixteen, twenty-fourfish. Prawns, a double handful. One surf clam.

  Fingers wiggled: Don't bust your chops, we'll take what you can get.

  Winston disappeared. Tomorrow he would be back with what he could collect, and would tell Jeremy what he wanted; but that was easier by daylight and while they were both in the water.

  The little girl asked, "Jeremy, can I go in with them?"

  "Depends. What are you wearing?"

  "No!" cried Greta Schilling, unseen in shadow until now. "Tomorrow morning, yes, dear?"

  "Yes, Mommy."

  Greta turned to Jeremy. "We wear our good clothes for your first night's banquet, you know." Reproving.

  "Mrs. Schilling, you flatter us."

  "Please, I am Greta. Jeremy, is it safe for a child to swim with Otterfolk?"

  "Absolutely. We depend on it. If we don't entertain them, they don't fish for us. Greta, I know that name. Shireen?"

  "Her great-grandmother Shireen died twelve years ago. Dzhokhar and I, we both loved her. So I married Dzhokhar Livnah and gave her name to our first daughter."

  It took Jeremy a moment to untangle that in his mind, but the implications-"So Dzhokhar settled with you? In Destiny Town."

  "Yes, for twelve years."

  And took Greta's surname, of course.

  "His wife was with Armstrong wagon, you see, but she retired. Many merchants travel the Road for a time and then retire to a family shop.

  Dzhokhar could have married another merchant, but we knew each other-"

  "Dzhokhar Livnah?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  "No, nothing." But he'd always assumed that everyone on ibn-Rushd wagon was named ibn-Rushd! Assumed that Joker was single, too. "I only wondered how a man named Livnah joined ibn-Rushd wagon."

  She shook her head. "There are things I'm not supposed to tell." If he forced too many merchants to say that too often, it would be noticed.

  But a caravan trainee was exactly who he wanted to question! He compromised. "Is there anything Ican tell you?"

  She laughed.

  "No, really. I've been listening to fire-pit talk for twenty-seven years. They speak a secret language, but I've picked up a little. Ibn-Rushd cooks, and that is my language."

  Shireen tugged at her mother's arm. "The fence," she said.

  "Yes. Jeremy, we walked down the beach this afternoon, as far as a razormesh fence. The beach beyond, it looked nice. Private. There were shells. Can you get us past that fence?"

  "As I understand it," Jeremy said, "if I could get you past that fence, you wouldn't see a restaurant here next year. That's the local birthground for the Otterfolk, Greta, and the Overview Bureau is very serious about that."

  "Oh." She thought a moment, then asked, "After you fillet the tuna, where do you take the bones and head?"

  "Soup stock. Everything interesting goes into the cauldron. On the caravans. . . you won't carry that size cauldron."

  "Why do you shudder?"

  He shook his head, thinking that a chef could always break off conversation for some convenient urgency- "Is it true that we mu
st get pregnant by men along the Road? And the

  men make the local women pregnant?"

  "That's what they say. They say also that you merchants are almost inhumanly good at doing that with us mortals."

  She dimpled. "I thought Dzhokhar might have been having fun with me. Well, I haven't had the training yet."

  Most of the merchants had gone up the Road and the rest had gone to bed.

  The Winslow family cleaned up after them to some extent, then quit.

  Jeremy went up to bed. He could climb a flight of stairs, now, but not run up it.

  He began stripping down, found he had some help. Harlow breathed in his ear. "So you want to join a caravan?"

  She must have felt him lose his balance and wince as pain crunched in his healing knee. He said, "I've been thinking about it. Who told you?"

  "Yvonne Dionne told me my husband was talking about hitting the Road. Yvonne and Wayne, the only thing between their shop and mine is a sandwich shop. Jeremy, were you serious? Is this a sudden thing?"

  Still thinking as fast as ever in his life, Jeremy said, 'Not sudden, but I never could have talked Karen into doing it, and just to get away from here-"

  "But with that limp-"

  "Oh, I can wait for the autumn caravan. I'll be healed by then."

  They were seated on the futon by now, and he took her face in his hands.

  "Will you marry me after the spring caravan leaves?"

  "Well, I'd have to, wouldn't I?"

  "What? Why?"

  She laughed. "The caravans only take couples!"

  "What?"

  "You didn't know?" Still laughing. "But you asked me to marry you first. Good!"

  He'd been thinking that she could vote his one-fifth share of Wave Rider. This blindsided him. "Everyone on a caravan is married?" What about Rian? and old Shireen? and Joker? Wait, Joker was married- "Well, no, not everyone. A woman in her teens or twenties, or a veteran who wants to die on the Road, but only if they're a caravan family, Jeremy.

  Anyone else, it's couples. Otherwise there would be too many men, I guess. Local help is supposed to be all men."

  He was still stunned. "Harlow, why didn't I think of coming to you before?"

  "You may be an instinctive liar, Jeremy."

  She was the answer all along, and he'd been dodging and weaving-