Destiny's Road h-3

by Larry Niven

  Tim was reluctant to ask. “So, are we being abandoned?” Three yutzes chortled. Bord'n said, “No, but Tim, the caravan can't stay in one place. Chugs wouldn't get anything to eat. So the wagons'll just roll down the Road by a caravan length, and then everyone will spend the day doing repairs.”

  “What about bandits?”

  “We've got Tucker wagon. They've got Spadoni.”

  “Which are they? I can't tell the wagons apart yet.”

  “Oh, you'd better know that. In every wagon there's extra stores,” joker said, “like Milasevik and Wu carry tents and bedding. Doheny, that's the infirmary. Doheny is where you run if you've got time to run. It's a better hiding place than the shop sections of the wagons. You go there if you're hurt too. It's in front because anything dangerous hits the front of a caravan first.”

  “Doheny. Front wagon,” Tim repeated.

  “Spadoni and Tucker store arms-”

  “Don't we all have guns?”

  Bord'n hesitated. “Shark guns and ammunition are in Tucker. What's in Spadoni isn't for yutzes. Don't be caught wandering around Spadoni wagon. And of course every wagon is part shop.”

  Yesterday's bandits had a penchant for attacking wheels. Merchant men and yutzes came streaming back from the main caravan to help set up repair facilities; they did wheels first. Undamaged wagons wanted their wheels reground. Presently they were all rolling wheels back down the Road.

  By midafternoon Wu and ibn-Rushd were ready to move.

  They rolled just far enough to join the rest of the wagons. Then repair and maintenance work continued all up and down the caravan.

  A few merchants were not to be seen. Tim had seen activity around Spadoni wagon. He might guess that they were somewhere about, armed, guarding the caravan. Armed with what? It didn't seem like a good day to stroll past Spadoni wagon.

  In midafternoon the chefs dug their fire pits and the chugs ambled into the sea. Nobody had been particularly concerned about hunting. Dinner was skimpy, largely fish and stored vegetables.

  Tim became aware that Rian was watching him.

  She said, “I might have known Mother would have you if I didn't. I should have taken you on the beach. You would have come then.”

  Rian made him edgy. Hadn't she flatly rejected him, without his ever having offered? Tim said, “Loria would have brained us both.”

  “Why would Loria Bednacourt hurt you? Or me?”

  “Hang on.” Tim spent a minute turning two Earthlife salmon, and thinking.

  Then he said, carefully, “You think Twerdahis are all alike? We aren't. Loria doesn't share. She wants her side of the bed, all of it. If she's in the kitchen, nobody else is cooking. Her man is hers from his heart out to all twenty-one digits. “It was nearly the truth: Loria would share with her sisters.

  “But she's not a merchant.”

  Again he saw how this would go. “Will you find me tonight?”

  “I will,” she said tartly, “if you don't stay up till dawn singing!”

  When she was out of hearing, he sighed. She'd expected him last night? What kind of signal had he missed?

  Better not to know than to guess wrong. A yutz could be in a world of trouble if he rubbed up against a merchant woman who didn't want him.

  Loria was far behind him, and she would expect this of him, and hate it.

  But Jemmy Bloocher still haunted him. Anything he did with a merchant woman might speak his secret. Tim Bednacourt is a Spiral!

  But then Senka ibn-Rushd must already know.

  And he burned.

  In the morning Rian was there, her back against his, sound asleep. He watched her for a time, savoring her touch without moving, smelling her hair, feeling good.

  Rian was lean and flexible and smooth. She made love with her mother's ferocity... and her mother's perception for a man's erogenous zones and how they could be made to react. But Rian paid more attention to what she was doing. The taste of semen surprised her. He was ticklish just above both hipbones; she was delighted. She made momentary mistakes-an elbow whacking him just under the eye-and caught herself, like an apprentice.

  Were merchant women trained somewhere? And the men too?

  Faint noises told him other yutzes were awake.

  Rian woke when he moved. Scrambling into his clothes, he asked her, “What's Spiral Town like?”

  She looked at him sleepily.

  “We wonder,” he said. “It's so close.”

  “Why don't you go?”

  He improvised. “I think the older people don't want the Spirals to know Twerdahl Town is that close.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe the Spirals would want to tell us how to live.”

  Rian yawned. “Maybe so. Anyway, I've never been in Spiral Town. They used to let us halfway in. They don't anymore, but they still buy from us. Not even Gran Shireen ever saw Columbia,” she said wistfully.

  Damon andJoker weren't in the tent. Tim thought nothing of that. While turning bread out of the woks, he noticed how many men weren't staying around for breakfast.

  There were times when a yutz might ask questions, and times when he must listen. A fresh yutz must be taught. This seemed different. This morning the merchants moved in a closed and purposeful pattern, and a yutZ could not make eye contact. Tim could see activity far down the Road, around Spadoni, the weapons wagon. Then men were moving uphill, and everyone was pretending not to notk~e.

  Trader secrets.

  It took longer to hitch up the chugs, of course, but-as yesterday- the caravan only moved one generous caravan length. Then all the women and yutzes (and no men) began a cleaning program. Wagons were emptied out and every compartment cleaned. Yutzes polished metalwork until, for the first time, Tim saw wagon trim gleaming. Clothing was laundered.

  A handful of merchant women hung around Tucker wagon. They were still taking bandits seriously.

  Dinner was skimpy again, but nobody seemed to mind. Everyone ate in a hurry, talking around mouthfuls of food. Tim never twitched anymore at the sight of men and women talking together. Still... something odd here.

  Tim assembled a dinner for Shireen ibn-Rushd, who smiled down at one and all from her perch in the wagon's driver's alcove. She thanked him, and he said, “They all seem indecently cheerful.”

  “Isn't it wonderful? There's always a time like this once on a circuit. All the men gone. Just the yutz men and the merchant women, and no locals.”

  Oh.They were talking in couples, many of them.

  The yutzes had cleaned up dinner before the sun dipped into evening clouds, with Quicksilver just behind. In fading dusk there was some singing, some storytelling, but a good deal of pairing up and disappearing into tents. Patriss Dole of Dole wagon sang with Tim, and taught him words and harmony to one of the ballads. Her own voice was very good. They'd never spoken until tonight.

  They spent some time watching the sky. Patriss was sure she'd found Argos, a steady star with a blue tinge, in the plane of the planets. Wouldn't the Argos mutineers be carving up asteroids by now? Tim saw a meteor from the west, not blue-bright enough to match vids he'd seen of Cavorite rising to orbit, but still.

  They went to Dole tent. Too late, too dark to be introduced to the other occupants. Just as well. They explored each other by touch in near-perfect darkness, made love, and talked, and loved again.

  He'd hoped she would speak of where the merchant men had gone. She didn't, and he didn't ask.

  Krista Wu had died of her wounds in the night. They buried her upslope, with a handful of apple seeds.

  Thirty men didn't rejoin the caravan until near sunset the next night. They were tired and dirty and laughing among themselves, and again there was no eye contact for a yutz. They had shot a deer... or killed it with something stranger; it seemed chewed almost in half.

  Grilling venison in the dusk, Tim could watch the merchants gathering at Spadoni wagon. The tools they were carrying, that Tim had never more than glimpsed, were gone when they broke into twos
and threes to get their dinner.

  Shortly after dawn, the caravan was rolling through tilted grasslands.

  Twenty merchants and yutzes walked past slowly moving wagons.

  Though they all carried shark guns, nobody seemed to be worried about bandits.

  Eight were hunters. They carried the long knives Twerdahls called “weed cutters.” The rest were fishers. Most of them carried line and poles, but Tim and Hal had been given long-handled nets.

  When they were clear of the wagons, the hunters turned off, inland. The fishers continued. Now lifeless melted-looking bluffs loomed on both sides of the Road.

  Cavorite must have crossed a ridge here, and recrossed and hovered, to carve a level path. When they reached the end of the cut, Tim peered over. He could see a path of gray rock leading steeply downslope through dense chaparral: a waterfall of molten rock, long since cooled.

  Merchants spoke a murky jargon among themselves. Even long-term yutzes used familiar words in strange ways. Joker ibn-Rushd and Eduardo Spadoni talked at length in low, angry voices, both of them waving ahead and shoreward. The few phrases Tim heard didn't tell him anything.

  When Tim got tired of that, he dropped back among the yutzes. They were talking about catching fish: a great weight of words for a task that seemed exceedingly simple. Tim listened and tried to learn, while they marched for most of a morning.

  The Road emerged from between the bluffs. Now it split- No, the Road ran straight ahead, miles from the sea. But just for a moment- Tim looked away to rest his eyes. At the edge of vision, a curve off to the left suggested itself. A cut through the low scrub forest, away from the Road. Sparse vegetation was what he'd seen, nothing more; but he knew.

  Cavorite had curved from its path, rising into the sky. Had flown downslOpe to explore, charring the soil. Returned and continued the Road.

  They were approaching a river and a bridge. The wagons were two hours behind them. Hal was telling Dannis Stolsh, “We ran back as far as Doheny wagon. I had two bites in me the size of walnuts. Not one of us went past Doheny. We just swarmed up and in, you wouldn't believe how fast. It was crowded in there, and all men, too, and Bryne Doheny trying to bandage the holes. We could hear the little monsters batting against the walls-”

  Tim didn't know enough to get a handle on this, and he didn't want to interrupt.

  The merchants were still quarreling. Eduardo Spadoni waved downslope and barked something sharp. He strode away fast, and Joker lagged to give him room. In a minute that put him alongside Tim.

  Tim wanted to see his face. He asked, “Joker. Is it a nickname?”

  Now Joker's anger wasn't showing. He wore that bland look: secrets. He pronounced his name, differently from what Tim had been saying, and spelled it out: “D-Z-H-O-K-H-A-R. An old name, not meant to be laughed at. My uncle's name is the same, but the family calls him Joe.”

  “Dzhokharr,” Tim tried to imitate Joker's pronunciation. “What did Hal mean, bites the size of walnuts?”

  Joker stared, then barked sudden laughter. “I remember that. Some turkey hunters ran into a hive of firebees in the salt dunes ten days down the Road from here. I could see men running back and climbing all over Doheny wagon and wedging their way in. Then the chugs, they all folded into their shells in a wave that ran right down the caravan. I just gaped, but Father, he got us inside. We all had to hide in the wagons, and some of us got bit. Stopped us for three hours. So, Tim, are you glad you joined a caravan?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Water roared around rocks, plunging down toward a sea lost to distance and mist. The river was wide here. The massive bridge was watersmoothed boulders embedded in smooth, homogenous rock: poured rock, like several structures near the hub of Spiral Town. Tim showed his awe and hid his recognition.

  Over the bridge they went, then downstream, spreading out.

  After that nobody got much exercise. The men with poles dropped their lines into still pools in the white water. They sat on smooth rocks and talked or dozed. When anyone shouted, Tim or Hal moved briskly to get the net under whatever was flopping on a line. The fish were Earthlife, three or four species. Dannis spread a sheet well back from the stream and cleaned the fish on that.

  The mist cleared for an hour in the afternoon. Tim could see all the way to the sea. There was a rectilinear feature along the shore: houses, many.

  “The Shire?”

  “Right.”

  “Why didn't they build along the Road?”

  “They don't like us,” Joker said. “They'd die without us, so they keep their manners. They'll cook us dinner if we bring the food. They don't fish or hunt much, so they don't get enough fat. There's another thing about the Shire,” Joker said. “You don't rub up against Shire women.”

  He'd already heard that. Tim said, “A yutz wouldn't anyway.”

  “Here, a merchant doesn't either.”

  The Shire was spread along five or six klicks of shore, four klicks downslope from the Road. Over that distance a dozen men carried forty pounds of fish in a net hammock, following a worn dirt path that in no way resembled cooled lava.

  There wasn't any beach. Waves smashed against rock cliffs, and only spray showed above the edge.

  From a central building the houses reached two arms out along the bluff. They were squarish, with peaked roofs, like the houses of Twerdahl Town. Differences became clearer as they came near. These were smaller. Some had been shored up. They were all the same color: weathered wood. Roofs weren't as high. Walls leaned.

  The hunting party beat them down. They'd killed something as big as a small man. Its head was shot to shreds, and puncture wounds showed along its body too. They were showing it to admiring Shire folk when the fishers arrived.

  “Boar pig,” Hal told him.

  A score of children swarmed around the carcass and the hunters from the caravan. Adults hung back, except for a dozen elder men. Those elders came to meet the fishing party.

  The merchants' bias against haste might have worked against them. Fresher fish would have made a better gift. The Shire elders chose not to notice. They exclaimed over the fish as they had the boar, gave both to the women's care, and took the merchants off to the big central building that Tim had already dubbed City Hall. It was older than the other houses, and better built; and it had once had windows.

  The Shire women were setting up to cook dinner. When Tim announced himself as a chef, they just looked at him, then closed a circle with Tim outside.

  Tim was starting to feel left out. The children d~dn't want to talk, only to look. He watched the women at work for a bit, ignoring Hal's grin. Did they think, did Hal think, would Rian think that he was interested in them?

  The Shire women enveloped themselves in shapeless robes. It was hard to see what they were like. One woman seemed bent and twisted, and too young for it. One or two who might be in their teens and twenties moved like they were in their thirties and forties. The way they moved and stood formed groups, with merchants and yutzes and Shire men outside. They closed themselves off from strangers, men and women alike, and only the Shire elders spoke to the elder merchants.

  Joker's warning, Hal's warning, seemed superfluous.

  The Shire had agriculture, at any rate. There were mushrooms big as a man's hand, corn and squashes and potatoes and unidentifiable flowery green stalks. It was all set steaming between blankets of Destiny ferns over a bed of coals.

  The pig got the same treatment. An hour later, the fish did too.

  The Shire men were settled in conversational circles, idle but for their busy hands. They ignored the men of the caravan, and Tim respected their wish. But Hal stood above one old man for a time, then called, “Tim? Bord'n? You've got to see this.”

  The old man was seated against the tilted wall of a house. His skin was dark and seamed, his curly hair gone nearly white. His legs were thin and knobby. There was something distorted about him. Maybe something about the line of his jaw? He'd been working on the pale inner surface
of an oval of hard gray stuff nearly a meter long, using tiny pointed picks. Now he grinned up, showing good white teeth set nearly at random, basking in Hal's admiration.

  “This's Geordy Bruns,” Hal said.

  The picks left dark scratches, or else Geordy Bruns had rubbed lampblack into them for shading. He'd carved a seascape: clouds and sea and dark bluffs, the same bluffs Tim could see to the northwest. A man in the middle distance, his back turned, looking up at a tinier human shape on the bluff. Tim turned the picture in his hands. A woman?

  “It's amazing,” he said, “how much you've shown with so few lines.” Geordy Bruns nodded happily. Tim handed it back, carefully, and asked, “What is this?”

  The Shireman's voice was rough, his accent twisted. “Scrimshaw. This's a lungshark's backplate.”

  Tim studied it. The polished surface had a pearly iridescence. Hal said, “They're littler, but elsewise they're not so different from a chug's. You can go to a caravan's campground and pick up a hundred.”

  Most of the Shire men were working scrimshaw carvings. Scenes differed; skills did too. Geordy Bruns showed a finished plate, a line of bas-relief skulls, all Destiny life, all clearly derived from some common ancestor. The middle one was certainly a chug. Another man had carved a crude view of Landing Day, as two featureless cylinders descended on inverted candle flames. A man Tim's age was instructing a younger one in technique, practicing on a chipped shell. They stopped uneasily until Tim stopped watching them.

  The rest of the caravan arrived near sunset.

  The men of the Shire distributed dinner. Some of them ushered the children into their own circle. When Geordy Bruns stood to take his meal, Tim saw that his back was twisted.

  These women might know only one way to cook, but it worked. Fish, pig, potatoes and mushrooms and greens, they all tasted wonderful. Tim became certain that they'd used a different Destiny plant to flavor each coal bed. He should have watched more closely.