by Larry Niven
Damon showed Tim how to manipulate ropes on the wagon's roof to open the sides. Tim took it through the full routine while Damon watched.
“What's next?”
“Cooking. What do you do best?”
“Omelets. Stir-fry vegetables.”
'Takes eggs?' Damon looked down the Road. Ground cover had grown sparse.
Tim asked, “Would there be nests around here?'
The old woman spoke unexpectedly. “Oooh, I'd think so!”
Why was that funny? But Damon smiled. “We'll send out some yutzes.”
In midafternoon the wagons rolled drunkenly across wide, fiat stones in a shallow stream. When the seventh wagon was across, they all stopped. Tim watched the women release the chugs.
He couldn't quite see how it was done. Loose a line from its knob on the rim of the driver's alcove, snap it like a whip, then retie it. It looked easy; it looked purposeless. Senka and Rian moved briskly along the arc of knobs. When they met at the center, several chugs could be seen to be loose and moving toward the beach.
The younger women stepped daintily down to the Road, then helped Shireen down. Damon and Tim stayed to open the wagon's side, then dropped to join them. Damon and the women were all armed, even Shireen,
All of ibn-Rushd's chugs were loose now. The other wagons, spread far apart up and down the Road, had released theirs.
“We've got time to set some fire pits,” Damon said. He pulled shovels from the wagon. “Tim, come on down to the beach. The labor yutzes know what to do.”
The sea was two hundred meters away. Most of the women, and not many men, walked down to the beach, taking no notice of two hundred and fifty chugs rolling down behind them in two slow waves. The chugs veered wide of the freshwater flow and its delta mouth.
There were old fire pits to be dug out. Men dug. Women supervised. Chugs flowed around them and into the waves.
Yutzes brought dry vegetation, Earthlife and Destiny trees and weeds. Tim saw two men dragging a lace-festooned log, and jumped to help. They set it on tinder in a dug-out pit.
One of the men asked, “You're Tim from ibn-Rushd? I'm Bord'n from Lyons wagon. Bord'n, not Boardman, whatever the merchants tell you. This's Hal, from Lyons too, but he's a chef.”
The women were starting their fires.
“Hello, Bord'n, Hal. Are all yutzes men?”
Bord'n laughed. Hal said, “All I ever saw. A pregnant yutz could be awkward. You don't see children either on a caravan.”
Still talking, the two men had him by the elbows and were walking him up toward the wagons before he could quite catch on.
With no discussion and no sign of haste, every human being in sight was ambling uphill toward the wagons. They climbed onto roofs and settled in. Senka, Damon, and Joker were already in place. Hal and Bord'n urged Tim up, and followed.
Damon greeted them; Senka passed around a pitcher of water flavored with lemons. Rian ibn-Rushd wasn't in sight. She must be visiting another wagon.
A forest rolled out of the water, black and bronze and yellow. A forest of seaweed, and motion working within it. Chugs.
Thrashing fish were dropping out of the weed, and chugs left the line to snap them up before they could reach water. Half-seen chugs were steadily pulling the beached forest apart, eating the crabs and fish and shellfish as they were exposed.
Tim watched in fascination.
As if at a signal, the chugs all began moving inland, leaving the weed behind.
Then things began coming out of the water.
They didn't look particularly scary. They were heavy and flat. The waves didn't topple them. They crawled onto land, paused a moment, then moved after the chugs faster than a walking man. There were twenty in sight when the first reached the beached seaweed.
The family ibn-Rushd, and their visitors, took their positions. “Save your bullets,” Damon told Tim. “You too, Joker.”
Tim had only been given six. It must be very natural, he thought, for a new yutz to waste bullets. So Tim held his pose and his fire.
A shark was three or four times the size of a chug, and flatter, built lower to the ground. Its shell was smaller and more simplified than the ornate points and edges of a chug shell. Its big head was mostly beak and shell cap and a backward-pointing prong for counterbalance. The beak was all points and curved edges, built for ripping. The eyes faced forward in deep recesses.
Even so, these were clearly the chugs' relatives. Chugs carried shields with edges and points that could gash a predator. Sharks carried weaponry.
The sharks paused at the seaweed forest. They were nosing into the weeds, seeking the same prey that served the chugs. The chugs were halfway to the wagons, moving as fast as Tim had seen them move.
One, then several sharks crawled over the weed in pursuit of the receding chugs.
Guns began to fire. Bullets thudded into the few sharks in the lead, poking holes in their shells or spraying seawater and blood from the rough gray-green skin below.
“Not many this time,” Damon said. “That near one in the middle? That's your target, Tim.”
Flat-footed, leaning forward just a bit, hands pulling against each other with the gun butt between... Tim fired. Bullets thudded into the beast's shell. Maybe one or two were his. He saw a shark still coming, swiveled, and used up his bullets on that one.
Four sharks were down, and the rest were running for the water. They weren't fast. A man could outrun them; but who would tire first, man or shark?
“You all stopped shooting,” Tim noticed, “as soon as they turned tail. Why not kill them all?”
The yutzes looked to Damon, who said, “If we killed off all the sharks, who knows what we'd get instead? We don't know what goes on under the water.”
“Think of us as priests of evolution,” Senka ibn-Rushd said. “Another twenty years, they'll run at the first sound of a gunshot. Maybe they won't chase chugs at all.”
“Here, Tim.” Damon held out a handful of bullets. “You've got good self-control. Take some time tomorrow, get some practice. For now, we don't have much daylight.”
Most of the merchants and yutzes began setting up tents. Those of ibn-Rushd and Lyons wagons set up to cook dinner. The evening was turning misty.
Marilyn Lyons glowed in the evening light. She was two centimeters taller than Tim and weighed more too. She dressed in brilliant greens and lavenders, dramatic against her white skin and black hair. She pulled cookware out of the storage compartments of Lyons wagon, hefting gear with no visible effort while she rattled off directions a little faster than Tim could follow.
“Teapot. Cook pot. Randall, Hal, get these on the fire and fill them with water. Add the turkeys when the big pot boils. You cleaned them? Good. Wok. Wok. Tim, you want both of these? And take this.” She didn't hand it to him; she pointed.
Two flattened cylinders half a meter tall, both glossy glaring red, in a niche beneath Lyon wagon. Tim wrapped his arm around one and caught a familiar scent.
“The speckles always comes back here. Always.”
Tim said, “Right.”
“That fire, that's yours to work on. The yutzes have the eggs and the veggies are in Dodgson wagon. Boardman, you're with Tim. Tim, any questions?”
“Why did the founders thaw these flies?”
Laughter shook her whole body. “They must have been crazy. Anyone want ovens?”
Randall took the pots and moved briskly away. Bord'n gathered up cooking tools, forks and knives and spoons and spatulas, and set them in a flat shell that must have come off the back of a record-sized shark. He followed Tim, towing the shark shell.
Cookware stored aboard ibn-Rushd and Lyons wagons was little different from what Tim had practiced with in Twerdahl Town. That was a relief. Vegetables were what the merchants could buy in towns and carry in wagons. Meat was what they could kill. Yutzes and merchants had been out hunting while the wagons were in motion.
Lyons wagon's two woks were bigger than he was used to. No pro
blem: a big wok could cook the same omelet as a small one. He was given oil. Yutzes from other wagons had the vegetables he needed. Bord'n had brought knives, spatulas, a whirring thing to whip eggs.
But the eggs were tremendous. He asked, “Bord'n, is this some Destiny sea thing?”
Bord'n grinned. “Ostrich eggs. Big bird supposed to be from Earth. Lot of 'em running around here. You maybe saw the mom, and maybe you'll eat her tonight, 'cause we shot three this afternoon.”
“Damn. What do the eggs taste like?”
“Better cook one first and find out. Hi, Rian!”
“Boardman.” The merchant girl nodded regally. “Tim.”
He smiled at her. “Evening.”
“How goes dinner?”
“Just another damn intelligence test,” Tim said. “I never saw ostrich eggs before.”
Rian smiled and moved on.
One ostrich egg was bigger than a ten-egg omelet. The taste was different, and Tim used more seasoning after his first attempt. Speckles, of course. A little lemon rind? Yes.
Veggies and eggs never stuck to the woks.
Other chefs were at work around other fires. Quicksilver winked out below the setting sun.
As in Twerdahl Town, people passed carrying food, gave him slices of fruit and big flat grilled mushrooms and ostrich meat, and carried away sliced-up veggie omelets. Ostrich was delicious. Heavier woks, heavier omelets: Tim was working harder than he was used to. He thought of himself as strong, big-shouldered, but this was wearing him out.
Shireen ibn-Rushd accepted a wedge of omelet. She tasted it. “Tim, isn't it? Yes. You have a nice hand with eggs.” She put something in his hand, smiled, and wandered off.
Dried cherries.
He noticed tents being pitched and beds laid within. The tents were many-lobed, and flaps were generally left open. Some of the merchants were already asleep before sunset.
As in Twerdahl Town, cooking ended at sunset. He'd wondered. But now cookware had to be carted to the river, washed, part-filled with water, and set back on the fires to boil clean.
Damon led him away to the ibn-Rushd tent. He would not have found it on his own, in the dark. It was a cross, four lobes meeting at a communal circle of cushions, Shireen snoring in one of the lobes. In the center, a low table. Damon and Senka wanted to talk, but they must have seen he was ready to collapse.
He rolled himself in blankets in one of the lobes and persuaded himself he was asleep.
But their voices ran through his dozing mind, telling merchant secrets, and the memories came back in later years.
9
Between
Of fin-contoured legs run down each side. Teeth rim the broad mouth, each splitting into a myriad points. A ~0l~d prong on the skullcap shell forms a beak or, more aptly, a ram: the cap b~tt5 against the main shell for greater strength. They're air breathing. They can come right up the beach at you.
-James Twerdabi, Flightcaptain, Cavorite
In the morning Bord'n reached through an open flap and shook Tim awake to make breakfast.
Dawn was a red glare above the mountains. Tim was stiff and tired. He did what the other yutzes were doing.
Blow up the ashes and add wood. Wipe out the woks and add dough that has been rising through the night. Cover them. Set the woks on the coals. Now a Destiny seaweed forest is rising from the waves, and it's back to the roofs while the chugs feed.
Chugs move up the beach. Sharks follow as far as the seaweed. No shots are fired. When the sharks return to the sea, the chugs have reached the wagons and the bread is done.
The bread never sticks to the woks.
While merchants get the wagons ready and hook up the chugs, the chefs and yutzes put away the cookware. They pass out bread along a wagon train already in motion.
He met Rian walking back to ibn-Rushd wagon. Almond eyes, dark oval face, intricately shaped hair. Lovely and strange. She studied him, then said, “You look worn out.”
“Where do we go next?”
“The Shire. Little town.” She turned and was walking with him toward the front of the caravan.
“Does the Shire have a graveyard?” “I'd think so.”
“Just drop me off there,” Tim said. “Here, have some bread.”
“Thank you. Tim, you can sleep once the bread's handed out.” But the tents were already stowed. “Where?”
“On the roof.”
He smiled. Two more wagons, four loaves to hand out, then sleep.
Just past noon, it rained. Six people crowded the wagon's dark, steamy interior amid cookware brought for sale and strange stuff collected in trade. The chugs plodded on while rain played flurries of drumbeats on the roof.
The rain left little time for hunting up dinner. Nobody found any eggs that day. Come evening, Tim and the other yutzes wokked vegetables with yesterday's red ostrich meat and served it over barley.
Wrestling the heavy wok was no easier the second night. When he tottered off to ibn-Rushd tent, yutzes and merchants were playing musical instruments and having a wonderful time. He wondered how they did it.
He felt his way through the tent by touch and hearing: toward Shireen's snoring, then turn left. Curled on blankets, eyes closed, he listened to the merchants' music. It came to him that he was learning more about cookery than about the path of Cavorite... and then it came to him that he was being watched. He opened his eyes.
Rian.
Just Rian. She asked, “Did you wonder why I didn't come to you last night?”
“No.” She seemed to expect something more, so he said, “I thought you must be with somebody in another wagon.”
She laughed. “Be with?”
He said nothing. Did merchants say that another way? Maybe a Twerdahl wouldn't know either.
Rian said, “It could have been you. I offered. Nobody turns me down more than once.”
Flash of annoyance. Gently, superciliously, he said, “I'm a married man.”
He couldn't read her face in the dark. He only saw her turn and move into another room of the tent. Tim let his head fall on his arm, and slept.
Moving up and down the wagon train looked easy. Anyone could do it. But the wagons never stopped moving. Tim was tired all the time. The stored vegetables were running out. The only fruit left was apples. Chickens and ostriches were scarce in these parts.
The caravan's yutzes took the lack as opportunity. They fished or hunted, or went off into the chaparral to search for anything edible. It was more fun than the continual repair work on the wagons.
Where Earthlife grew, likely you could eat some part of it. Bord'n showed him roots to dig up, fruits to pick, spices. Sage and mustard, apples and pears and oranges, potatoes and yams. Watercress.
The Road ran a klick above the shore, more or less, never dipping very near. Sharks couldn't possibly get that high, and it wasn't convenient for tending the chugs. Cavorite's crew hadn't learned about chugs when they made the Road, hadn't planned for caravans either.
Afternoon of the fifth day they reached land that looked halfcultivated, and twelve houses clustered halfway between the shore and the Road.
You couldn't call it a town. Farther, they called themselves. They were friendly to the point of effusive. The merchants supplied food and the Farther folk cooked it. Their style of cuisine was more like Twerdahl Town than Spiral Town. The merchants supplied the speckles.
Several men and women of the caravan didn't use their tents that night, but none of them were yutzes.
On the sixth morning, Tim Bednacourt was no longer tired.
Late afternoon. No ostriches, no chickens, no eggs. Bord'n had killed four rabbits; others had caught fish. Hal showed Tim how to prepare and grill a Destiny shieldfish on a grill carried from ibn-Rushd wagon.
The fish massed thirty kilograms. Its canoe-shaped shell was probably the dorsal surface. The fins on its flanks and underside were shaped to move water, but they bent in the middle and at the base: little legs with elbow and shoulder joints, t
ipped with twenty centimeters of horn blade. With those and its long pointed beak and the shell for a shield, the creature might fight one enemy while another wasted its efforts on the shell- “Tim! Snap out of it! Let's get this on the grill.”
They cut the fins off at the shoulders, but left the shell on. They set it on the fire, shell down, and trimmed off the fins while that side cooked.
“What's the Shire like?” Tim asked.
Hal said, “Hundred people. Tiny, but they'll cook for us and we'll trade our stuff for rice and nuts. Tim, do not try to sleep with any woman of the Shire.”
Tim just nodded.
“They're very serious about that.”
Tim didn't find that remarkable. “What if a woman asks?”
“Won't happen. Yutzes don't ever get asked. It's merchants who get the action, but not in the Shire.”
“How far is it?”
Hal said, “We'll be there in four days, barring bandits.”
''Bandits?”
“Guns aren't always for sharks.”
The way Hal was grinning, Tim wasn't sure how much to believe. He asked, “How far away are the Otterfolk?”
“We get to Haunted Bay in another fifteen days. From Haunted Bay there are Otterfolk offshore all the way to Tail Town, another six or seven.”
“You've seen them? Otterfolk?”
“Yeah.”
Bord'n passed, handing out the last ear of corn. They ate, then turned the fish. The grills looked like iron, but they were frictionless settlermagic stuff. Nobody but Tim ever worried that food might stick. It never did.
Tim expected the level of civilization to drop with distance from Spiral Town. But wherever there was humanity, there would always be a few ancient, hoarded miracles.
Ask Hal about Otterfolk. He's from Tail Town,” Bord'n said.
“Oh?”
Hal said, “They're easy to like. Don't touch unless they invite you, because they bite. They can't help it. They like to hear us talk, or sing. They can't talk themselves....” Once started on a topic, Hal tended to talk until some outside force stopped him.